If you wait long enough, even slow progress adds up

If this were a movie, the following would be a time lapse montage with inspiring music playing. (Got that scene set in your head?) Ok,

January 2018

The vanity wall has been redone and drywalled. (Reread this post for reminder of disaster.)

After that comes primer:

The bathroom and closet would have been done (primed) at this point.

March 2018

The vanity is installed (pictures coming below) and I put inserts in the back of the medicine cabinets. I covered them with wall paper. Nothing is permanently attached so it would be easy to change. Shortly after this Troy installed the shelves and that's what holds the insert in.

By April I had the bathroom and closet painted. It's a warm light tan colour (Valspar 3005-10B Gardenia if you're really curious. Depending on your screen settings, the picture in the link may or may not look like my wall.).

We had had water flowing since the previous November (2017). That was a very very happy day.

Troy installed the purchased mirrors with piano hinges to be the door of the medicine cabinets:

Moving on to the bedroom. The drywall went up at the same time as the bath and closet and I think was roughly done at the same time. Getting the bathroom done being our first priority, the bedroom lagged behind.

We got in a slog (cue the ominous music for our montage) about mudding and sanding, and it was not done for a long time.

A really long time. Meanwhile, Troy did get some doors installed in February of this year. I think it was just in time for the superbowl when we had some people over.

The bathroom and closet doors are in; the main bedroom door is not.

This happened at some point along the way:

A few months after we started using the shower, we noticed water in the office below. Troy really didn't think it was his plumbing (I mean, really! As if!) but he opened the wall anyway to confirm that yes, indeed, his plumbing was not leaking.

After more investigation, he saw that the caulk had failed and the water was seeping out where the shower wall met the tub. This shower/tub unit advertised that you didn't need caulk in large letters. Troy would have caulked anyway, but further in the instructions the instructions said that if you didn't use caulk, the unit may leak. What? I think they advertised you didn't need caulk because the walls are made of a material that caulk really doesn't want to stick to.

Troy super redid the caulk and we haven't had any trouble since. And we have a hole in the wall.

We decided to cover the hole with a mirror. A mirror we could remove later if needed. In other words an access panel.

The mirror is in a great spot at the end of the little hall between the closet and the bath. Troy did a great job finding matching trim and then detailing it to match the vanity mirrors.

The  mirror is hanging from a French cleat and is completely flush to the wall because the cleat is attached to the studs, which are recessed from the drywall. It really is slick. The other thing that tickles me about it is that we used a mirror we already had. It was large enough to cover the hole and the frame Troy built covered damaged parts of the mirror so it looks almost new. And cost us $0.

I think some time in May we declared the drywall done or we would have been doing it the rest of our lives. And I set to priming

and then painting. The walls are a light grey that looks purple, but mostly in daylight. Since I'm mostly in my room at night with the light on, maybe it will always look grey for me. :) (Valspar 4001-1B Winter Calm if you're curious.)

I also got the doors painted. Dark greyish brown (DutchBoy 447-7DB Velvety Night)

We went with silver coloured lever type handles and got enough for all the doors upstairs.

A current shot of the bathroom, where you can see the curtains I finally found and bought:

I would say I've looked long and hard and in the end I found them at Menard's, where we buy everything else for the renos. But only because I gave up on having linen.

The only wall decoration I've hung:

I found this cheeky cheetah and zebra pair at Goodwill a few years ago. No, please don't think I have a jungle theme going on! But they're snappy and match the brown/grey or gold/silver thing I've got going on in these rooms.

We're getting close enough to moving into the bedroom that I got serious about shopping for furniture. I wanted a narrower tall dresser for myself so it could sit right in the closet. (In fact, I'll be building the closet shelving/rods around it.) I found this curved beauty at one of the antique "malls" near here.

If you look closely at a picture further up (in the closet behind the partly open door), you can see the curved-drawer secretary that I just bought for my nightstand. They're not a set but they've got the same look and style.

And then at Goodwill, I found a pair of these chairs:

I love the little wing arms and they feel good to sit in. Yes, I'm a little leery of used upholstered furniture, but I really like these and they looked pretty good. They had zero smell as I drove home with two of them stuffed in my car so I take that as a good sign.

I was thinking I was going to reupholster them but Troy liked the existing fabric and since it matches my grey/brown theme, I'm going with it. I'm hoping one chair will fit in the closet (a place to sit to put your socks on) and the other can be in the bedroom. Otherwise I'll find room for them both in the bedroom. In case you're wondering, $10 each. I was going to paint the legs to match the doors but I don't have enough paint. Buy more now or wait until I'm painting the main bedroom door?

Currently, I am up to my eyeballs in trim, getting it painted and ready for Troy to install.

A priority since the baseboard needs to go in the closet before we finish up the storage part of it. I am dying to get my clothes in there.

Servitude Sunday: Trip to Hell and Back

One of the first screws to hold in
my cabinets (Monday Dec 5).

I can't believe it's only been a week since I've given you an update on the general kitchen progress. So much has happened!

For one thing, after we had the three cabinets in place last Sunday, I told Troy that we were moving a cabinet in each day just to keep them moving in. The first two I did myself...the 12" tray divider cabinet and the 6" roll out spice rack. They're on the far left in this pic:

The spice rack took quite a bit of Troy's time on Tuesday and Wednesday but he got it done. It's designed to hang off the adjoining cabinets, but we put it on an "end" (next to the stove). Troy had to modify an end piece we bought for the situation. It worked but did need some customizing. It looks great.

After that was done, Troy started working on the cabinets on the other side of the stove. One part of that was the dishwasher. Wednesday evening I walked in through our back door and saw this:

That's where the dishwasher used to be! Surprise...it was moving day.

It took a few days of getting things arranged and the rest of the cabinets installed on this section.

But once that was in, it was time to make a counter top! Troy cut plywood to shape and then we put the Formica on. Here it is last night before Troy cut the sink hole in the Formica:

It was so beautiful! That's where we went to bed Saturday night. All the base cabinets in, dishwasher installed (electrical hooked up but no plumbing yet) and one counter installed.

This morning Troy cut the edges of the Formica even with the counter edge with a router and cut out the sink hole. He had a few other tasks to do (not related to the kitchen) and commented on the way to church that if the whole day went like the morning, then he should have the whole house done today. ;)

We got home earlier than usual (1:30) and Troy got right to it. Today it was plumbing the sink and dishwasher. He sent me to Menards for some supplies. We wrote a list, but some of it was more like a goal than an object. ("Something to go from a 3/4" pex to a male garden house--you won't be able to do it in one piece." or "3/4" pex to 1/2" female end with at least 20" of hose between--you'll need an adapter in there somewhere too.") But off I gamely went.

I did a little looking on my own, but when the helpful employee asked if I was finding everything, I went ahead and asked for his help. I thought I'd start with the easiest thing on the list--something I knew existed but just wasn't sure where to get--a 3/4" to 1/2" pex adapter. I said the part's name and I described what it did, and although he took me to the right aisle, he confidently told me that it didn't exist. You couldn't do that. I would need to put another piece of pex in between. I knew this was wrong and excused him as soon as I could. (I mean if you need pex in between the 3/4 and 1/2 pex, how do you attach that piece of pex? With the very part I was looking for.) Anyway, once on the right aisle, I found that part.

The rest were much harder as I had to consider which 2 or 3 steps I needed to take to go from Starting Point to Destination. It didn't help that the signs weren't consistent and many parts were misfiled. And once when I finally found the part I needed and verified it fit into the other part I had, I went to get the second one I needed and I couldn't find the bin again!! Oh I'm sure you've been there so I'll stop; suffice it to say, an hour and a half later I was able to leave that little version of hell.

I came home with my haul:

It doesn't look like much for being at the store for an hour and a half!! And it turns out I got the wrong hose. (That discovery wasn't soul-crushing as I was pretty much counting on something being wrong.) But I know they make the one we need and it was in stock.

Btw, I allowed the employee to redeem himself when I couldn't find the plumber's putty and he not only knew what I wanted existed, he could take me right to the shelf where it was.

Anyway, that was pretty much the end of my servitude this Sunday. Troy was very sympathetic when I got back and agreed that shopping in the plumbing supply place can indeed be hell. Then he made me some popcorn which helped a lot.

By the end of the night, the plumbing looked like this:

Of course the supply lines are not connected because we don't have the right hoses.

And above the counter? We have this:

The sink is completely installed--no cheating with a dry fit and taking a picture! I think it is so beautiful. I maybe a little obsessed with the

sink. Maybe a lot. I love it. I will love it even more when water comes out of the tap and then drains away. Can you imagine doing dishes in a sink like that? It will be heaven. (With the dishwasher out most of the week, I am not overjoyed by doing dishes in the tiny bathroom sink.)

I really should have taken some pictures earlier in the week when the stove was in place (sort of a "dry fit") and everything was cleaned up. It was lovely. Now it's a big ole mess again and it's hard get a good picture of the whole room.

But here's a try:

But things should just be getting better from here...

Troy has the second piece of counter cut (of three). They should go a lot faster since there's no sink to deal with.

I also dragged in all the upper cabinets, so they are filling a good chunk of the kitchen.

The upside...I am parking in the shop again. Hurray for heated parking!!

Servitude Sunday: More Destruction

As promised, I delivered Troy two more hours today. He decided to tear down the paneling from the southeast corner. We needed to get it out to be able to work on the subfloor. While he was pulling it down, I was smashing nails flat, cutting up the wood and paneling to a disposable size, and bagging it.

Here's the southwest corner now:

The top was painted, but it looks like the bottom section may have had wainscoting on it at some point. I'm going to miss the red paneling; it really was a great colour. I'm thinking of keeping a sample so I can get it matched if I want to paint a room red. That would be neat, I think. There were two layers of paneling, by the way. We are ripping out a lot of layers of this house!

I also found this little bit of history. This outlet was buried behind the paneling. You can see some early wallpaper.

It looks like a papered outlet cover, but there's no cover. It's just the ends of the different pieces. I'm sure it's been long enough that it would look charming again. I guess this also tells us that when they decided to paint over the wallpaper, they didn't bother to take off the cover. :sigh: But wait...there's more.

While I was serving my time, Troy needed help in the basement putting in the new water line. While we were working on that, he wiggled one of the drain pipes. Water gushed out. "Holy crap," he said. "That joint isn't glued." We just keeping finding issues with the drains. (The bathtub's leaking again, by the way.)

Not two minutes later, Troy moved a different pipe and water poured out of that one. Another joint that wasn't glued!!! Troy was able to glue that one once we got rid of the rest of the water and he cleaned it. The first joint we noticed didn't take. Troy thinks they used the wrong glue in the first place and now the right glue won't stick either. So for now it's just a "friction fit" like it's been since we moved here.

Some illustration:

Troy said he was going to give me his most disgusted look.

Here's a diagram of our wonderful drain pipes:

The green lines represent the direction of the drain. The yellow lines show the direction of gravity. They should be going the same way!!

One more:

This is a third joint Troy noticed that was "sealed" with electrical tape. (And you can really see how much the white pipe in his left hand is going down hill to the left. It's supposed to be draining to the right. :big sigh:, right?)

On another note, Troy has finished the cold water plumbing and was able to test it today by turning on the water. No leaks, no drips! He will be happy to tell you we now have water in the kitchen. I will tell you we technically have water in the kitchen. I will save the long story of the pot filler for another day...

Water, trailers, firewood, earthmoving, and a plan to save the world, but not kitchen remodeling.

We were making rapid progress on the kitchen, and then life intervened again. I find that being alive and engaged does keep one's dance card rather full. I am mystified (and frankly saddened) by those who seem to do little else besides work and television. Something smells rotten in the kingdom of stewardship if you ask me. But enough of potshots against wasting your life. Ooops. Did it again...sorry. As another aside, our church small group is reading a book titled, "Jesus, Mean and Wild". It illustrates with many examples how Jesus was not a very nice man and ran around getting up into peoples' business and making them uncomfortable. The author suggests that if you're just trying to be "nice" to people, and not offend them, ever, you're probably doing it wrong. So, if I have offended you slothfull TV addicts out there, well hey, that's what Jesus would do.

OK, I really am coming to the point now.

I have not been laying around watching my soaps while the kitchen goes undone. I got a load of firewood, which I have been hacking to pieces and stacking. Steady progress there. The frost is definitely out of the ground, so I used the front end loader on the tractor to spread some more fill around the east end of the shop to level things out. I replaced the wimpy, sucky, broken axle on my little trailer. It developed a bad wheel bearing--again! It was the kiss of death.

I don't mind fixing something once, but two failures in a short period usually means a big upgrade. I went to my favorite junk yard and bought a big manly rear axle from an old minivan. I feel like I have graduated to "big boy" tires instead of the rinky dinky 12" tires/wheels that the trailer came with. It does make the little rinky dinky fenders look silly, since they really don't do much to cover the big sedan sized tires.

And most celebratorily, I got the water hooked up to the mad scientist lair, um, I mean the shop. Part of the biodiesel process involves literally washing the raw contaminated new biodiesel with water. I have traditionally used hot water because it works faster than cold water. And I have hauled that water in five gallon buckets, because I had no running water in the shop. I make a batch every week or two. Each batch needs 5 wash cycles. Each wash cycle needs (4) five gallon buckets, so 20 buckets a week almost. So, for four years, that's 4,000 buckets hauled by hand. Whew! Makes me tired just thinking about it.

Two weeks ago, something snapped in my brain, and I determined that I had hauled my last bucket of water by hand. Years ago, before the shop foundation was poured, I dug a trench and "roughed in" all the utilities, electric, water and sewer. But there was always something just a little bit more important on the list of things to accomplish, so the final hookup for water just never happened.

Once I had "HAD IT" with hauling water in all sorts of inclement weather, the actual process of finishing the hookup only took three or four hours. I was like an eight year old kid who just got his first bicycle, watching with glee as the water gushed out of the garden hose. Now that I had pressurized running water in the shop, I could afford to switch to cold water washing of the biodiesel. While somewhat less efficient than hot water, WHO CARES, I don't have to haul it by hand. So now I have to do one or two more "wash cycles" on each batch, but my energy costs for electricity crashed through the floor, as noted by our last post. Stewardship ROCKS!

And finally, I have been working on a plan to save the world (in my spare time). As a species, we face several of the greatest challenges ever to our survival as a civilized group. Here is a short (incomplete) list if you want to google them all and go get depressed:

Peak oil
Peak water
Peak soil
Peak coal
Peak uranium
Peak natural gas

Peak phosphorus
Peak copper
Peak iron ore
Peak food
Peak rare earth metals
World overpopulation

I have pretty much worked out how to solve this, but it will take a month or two to write a really convincing summary with all the supporting documentation. Solving all the world's resource problems turns out to be a bit knottier problem than I originally imagined.

I am totally unconvinced that the government of any country, or any group of countries, will do anything meaningful to solve any of these problems. So that pretty much leaves it up to us. I hope to give you the tools and information so that when you consider every meaningful consumption event in your life, you will understand how to do it in such a way as to avert or at least mitigate the oncoming tragedies. Food, housing, transportation and conservation will be the big categories.

If you really really can't wait to save the planet and your fellow humans, I'll give you a little teaser where you could get some significant hints:

Paul Wheaton

The biggest permaculture forum on the web

permaculture meets inner city, aka the urbanfarmingguys

permaculture podcast and interviews

Greening the desert by Geoff Lawton

or do a youtube search for Geoff Lawton and watch everything he has done.

How to heat your house for free, forever, almost anywhere

transportation stuff

Stay tuned...

troy

Plumbing Update

Troy did manage to fix the bathtub plumbing yesterday.

I went out for a little b-day party in the evening and he seemed quite disappointed that I didn't stay in and try it out by taking a bath. Sorry, honey, not tonight...

When I got home from the party, however, Troy was trying out the tub with another bath of his own! Now, before you question his work ethic, he had put in his time already that day and it seems he is fighting something (cold, flu, bug, whatever). The good news is that it all seems to be working fine.

The silver lining in this emergency plumbing fix is that Troy has now replaced three of the four drains in the house. Logic would dictact that there just aren't that many more that can fail!

Honey, I Dropped the Drain

Light from the basement shining up through the drain hole

Let me start at the beginning.

Some (shortish) time after we moved in, Troy tried to take a bath and couldn't get enough hot water to fill the tub. He warned me that we would have to boil water to take a bath. I took this to heart and have not had a bath since we moved here. (Cue sympathy.) This is very sad when I think on it because I can really enjoy a good bath.

Fast forward to this week when Troy was feeling very sore and achy and announced he was going to have a bath. "What? I thought we couldn't do that?" I reply with my eyebrows highly arched in surprise. It turns out Troy's earlier comments applied to the original water heater which we replaced shortly after moving here. (Probably not long after Troy had tried to take that bath.) Only I didn't realize it was a whole new ball game. So there goes 2+ years of bath taking right down the drain (so to speak). I can tell you, ignorance is not bliss.

Anyway, while taking this bath this week, Troy gets completely fed up with the tub. The original bath mentioned above had already led to him caulking shut the overflow. (Previously the overflow worked, only it wasn't connected to any pipes so that water just poured into the basement quite freely.) It was, however, still leaking a steady drip. The drain also leaked pretty steadily. That's a lot of water flowing into the basement!

Troy decides he's had enough (like I said, he was fed up) and rips out the previous overflow cover etc, cuts a piece of appropriate hard plastic we've got lying around and caulks it to the tub wall.

We now have no overflow safety at all, but we figure we are responsible enough not to let the tub overflow anyway. And at least we can have some deeper baths.

So removing the overflow also removed the toggle switch to close the drain. We had bought an alternate drain cover so we were prepared for that. What we weren't prepared for was the complete failure of the drain pipe. The pipe wasn't really attached at the upper connection (overflow/drainswitch); it was just sitting next to the spot it was supposed to be connected too. (And for some reason Troy's original fix of more caulk just didn't quite solve the problem.)

Removing the overflow cover and drainswitch shifted the top of the pipe which led to the revelation that it wasn't really attached at the lower connection either. It was just sitting against the drain hole, but generally plumbing prefers a nice water tight connection. Good plumbing anyway. And, in light of all this, you will not be surprised to hear that the connection a little further down where it meets the main sewer pipe was not good either; it was just sitting on top of that pipe.

Troy came upstairs to where I was finishing my ironing holding the rusty, dripping pipe in his hand. I'm not sure what he said and whatever words he used doesn't matter because all I heard was that I would not be taking a shower in the morning. He assures me, though, that it will be fixed tomorrow.

Handyman tip: While working on this project, Troy shared with me the tip for recapping your tube of caulk. Wrap the open end with aluminum foil kept in place with a rubber band. He's neither found nor read about anything that works better. There, now your time reading this post wasn't wasted!

-a grubby christina

Catching Up

Been wondering what we've been up to? I can tell you Troy's been busy with plywood. The south side of the roof is done except for the final pieces along the east side. He still has to add the overhang for the eave on that side and he can't do the plywood until that is done.
Troy did cut off the plywood on the west side over the eave so that side is looking very finished now.

I don't know if this picture will convey the feeling I had the other day, but I was walking to the compost pile and glanced over to the shop and thought, "Wow! That looks like a room now." I guess it was the trusses making a ceiling, even if an incomplete ceiling.

Troy has also made the frame for both windows in the shop. There will be one on each of the north and south walls.

As for other little projects around the house, the upstairs sink is now working again. (Super YEAH! Especially since we are expecting company soon.) And while we were having the super deluge of rain a couple weekends ago, I mentioned to Troy that it would be really nice if he could find the time to fix our chimney since rain was falling into it and making our stove and pipes rust inside. Not nice. (You may recall that the chimney topper and top section of pipe were ripped off in a big wind storm last winter.) Troy found time in short 

order, and the chimney is now working splendidly.

I tested it today with a nice roasty fire. The air is getting

 chilly, that is for sure; this is the second fire for us for this season. (The first one I insisted Troy make for me after helping him outside on a cold drizzly day.) Currently I am absolutely cooking in the living room, even with all the fans running. As soon as this is done, I will seek cover in another room.

I think this is all for now. I tried to do shingles today, telling Troy I had a whole day free to offer him. But (alas) the work must be inspected before we can continue to shingles. So I was off the hook. (I'll try not to "yippee!" too loud.) Troy said he needed to finish the plywood on the roof (including the east eave and leveling the east gable) and then it's inspection time. Let's hope nice (but still crazy) Inspector shows up instead of his other personality, evil and crazy.

Take care of you and the ones you love,

christina

Rain, Rain

So are you wondering how we are getting on with all this rain?

What rain? The rain that came pouring down over us all through the weekend. The whole area has been breaking records and experiencing flooding all over the place. From some time on Friday to the same time on Saturday we broke any and all existing record for rainfall in a 24 hour period. Saturday's evening news reported that we had smashed (flooded?) the record for a calendar day and it was still raining and continued to rain past midnight. (Most numbers I've heard are some where between 10 and 12 inches total rain.)

On a personal level, I went to empty the rain guage on Saturday afternoon and it was full. Like full, full, like 5 inches full. At first I thought it was like the time I let the sprinkler go on so long it filled the rain guage and then when I noticed it later I was surprised it had rained that much but then realized it was just the sprinkler. ha ha. But no, this time it was really the rain. A full rain guage is a suprising thing to see. And the next day, I emptied out 4.5 inches more. Wow and wow.

And as to how we are actually fairing with all this wetness: good. The shop's floor drain is functional and worked great as long as Troy kept the leaves and flotsam from clogging it. The basement is not really much wetter than it is with any heavy rain; and certainly not so bad that the sump pump can't take care of it in short order. The dehumidifier we have running down there did conk out, but Troy tells me he was able to fix the old dehumidifier (which is actually newer than the one we were using, but that is another story) and so now we are back in business as far as humidifiers go.

Very little work (like no work) was done on the shop over the weekend, so we put our noses to the grind stone tonight...but I think I will post that separately even though that will mean many of you will read that post before this post, unless you specifically read by date and not just from the top of the page down. In either case, I'm sure none of the interesting bits will lose their shine.

Oh, ya, and on more water issues: the upstairs sink is still not functional. Troy replaced all the drain pipes etc but couldn't get out the pipe attached to the sink which is an old size (too small) and ditto on the size of the pipe he's reconnecting all this to. So the sink is reassembled, we hope the patches will hold, and Troy has to cut the hole in the floor a little bigger to accommodate the new larger pipe. One day at a time, sweet Jesus...

Til then,

christina

Down the Drain

We've had more plumbing issues. The kitchen sink has been slow to drain and occasionally clogged on and off for a couple months. Troy has tackled the problem with snakes, draino, more industrial draino, plungers and all to no permanent avail. He finally had to snake the drain and drain pipes in three different spots and removed some big ol' clogs. The sink has now been working nicely for a couple weeks so we are hopeful that is done.

The upstairs bathroom sink started giving trouble in July. I was in the kitchen and heard a strange sound behind me. Investigation led to the discovery of a little water on the floor from the drain pipe above. So the bathroom sink was leaking...a little bit...sometimes. Troy figured the joint by the U bend was no good and when enough water drained to fill the trap, the rest went out and down into the kitchen. So we had no useful sink in the bathroom for a week or so. The first repair with caulk didn't take, so Troy pulled out the big guns--epoxy--and that has seemed to fix it.

So we are running on all sinks again. Yeah! Life is full of all these decisions about what needs fixing, what is worth fixing, and what can wait for the new refit it will get as we continue to remodel.

-c

ETA: The bathroom sink repair did not "take." So we don't have a working sink upstairs...ho hum...sigh...

Inspection down the drain

This post was going to be called "Where oh where is the inspector?" b/c Troy has been done the plumbing for some days but the inspector showed up before I wrote the blog. (I guess he won that one.) Yesterday we came home to an approval on the plumbing work Troy has done...with one caveat: Troy must add a T-joint and cleanout pipe which is accessible from the outside of the builing. Troy does not think this is necessary (or he would have done it in the first place) and he's not sure why Mr Inspector wants it, but what can you do. (And this is not Inspector BS in case you are wondering.)


Here are some shots of Troy's lovely work. In the first shot, the closest drain is for the sink and the next ones for the facilities. (No shower, but I really hate to call it a "powder room" in a shop!)
In this next shot the first drain is for the mechanic shop and the next one down the line will service the biodiesel station. You use a lot of water to wash vegetable oil.

Lastly, we have a shot of the 2x6s Troy is adding to the top of the outside of the forms. This was part of the revisions to the plans made for Inspector BS earlier this spring. It will serve to make a thicker floor and foundation.
That is all for now. Troy has had good clear weather for the most part, although very hot outside on a lot of days. That is not really a complaint, just reporting the conditions.

-christina