New (Floor) Plan

Here is a new floor plan based on the fact that we can build in the SE corner. We've moved the fireplace, too. Have to consult a contractor on how feasible the fireplace is, though.

For those of you who remember the post about the corroded hot water pipes, here is a picture of one of the worst. Solid corrosion. Almost no room for water to pass through.

And here is a picture of our vintage exhaust fan in the full bathroom. It's on a timer and there is a little bit of startup time (about 5-10 seconds) as it winds up. It's actually not even attached (up in the attic space). It just sits there. No screws attaching in to a truss. I'll have to do something about that someday.

Room

Today we found out from city hall that we can build as close as five feet from the property line. The property line is basically the fence the put up right in front of what used to be the front door. The distance from the fence to the side of our house is five feet.

Big deal, you might say. What this means, though, is that we can actually add on a third bedroom. We were originally going to put a deck there (and I think it would have been a lovely place for a deck), but a third bedroom will add resale value to our house as well as allow us to live here longer. If we have a bedroom for each kid, there's really no limit to how long we can stay. So, that'd be a pretty nice thing to do. They're going to be pouring foundation on the front lot, anyway- it might not be hard for us to go in on it with the builder, or at least his crew. Who knows. They'll be here already, after all, and there's something to be said for under the table...

At the very least, it gives us something to chew on until it's warm and dry enough to rip off the walls and actually begin the rewiring.

Dough-a-go-go

We were talking tonight, and we realized that we never really talked about whether or not we got our money back.

Well, we did. We almost didn't. Somebody (the loan people) didn't do the paperwork right and forgot to make sure the funds would be released to us and not back to the seller. Ugh. It took a bit, but we did get our money back. What's really scary is that it's already half gone. We haven't even started to rewire anything yet or do the new drywall, and the money's already half gone. Oy. House stuff is REALLY expensive. Of course, the electrician himself was $3K. That was a quarter of our money right there. Now I'm wondering how the heck we're ever going to manage to do some of the things we want to do. We'll probably be able to do the rewiring, and the new walls, and maybe put in bamboo floors, and then we'll be about out of cash. We won't have even started on the kitchen... Well, we'll figure it out. Here's to hoping for good raises.

Now we just have to go buy a sawzall and the rest of the pex for the cold water plumbing, as I think I mentioned before. Whee. That might happen this week. First order of business is to sweep all the stuff off of our roof. We had a big wind storm here over the weekend, and I think half the forest is on our roof. Okay, so the big, beautiful cedars on the front lot kept us out of the worst of the wind, but there's still a lot of stuff up there. They make special roof-sweeping brooms. We're going to buy one of those. It's supposed to be sunny the whole week (miracle of miracles!), so we have some time.

Safety First

Or, in our case, eventually. No, we actually put up our smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detector. We won't be dying of fire anytime soon, hopefully. Actually, it was an extremely unpleasant task, for being such a simple one. First, we discovered that every single ceiling we tried to fasten a detector to was different. One was wood, one was wallboard, and one was plain ol' drywall. We fastened one to a beam. The same beam, actually, as the ceiling fan o' death that nearly claimed the noggin of my brother (several times). We've also fastened our makeshift ceiling light to that beam as well. Thank goodness for old Ikea paper lanterns. The light it casts is beastly, in my opinion, but it does the trick until we can redo the ceiling and put in recessed lighting.

Anyway, what made the whole detector experience horrible was that it was a throwback to our run-ins with fire alarms at the old apartment (which we shall call, for now, "heaven," as it was clean, comfortable, had heat, and wasn't in danger of flooding). Some of you know this, but the system was hard-wired and made the most god-awful noise. It would have awoken us from a dead slumber. In fact, on our last night there, it did. Horrible. Long story short, we're now really, really sensitive to noises like that. The detectors, of course, needed batteries, but when you put the batteries in, it makes the alarm noise. Several times. As soon as you connect. I literally couldn't hold on to the detector the first time it happened- the noise upset me so much I nearly ran. So, the installation was basically an hour of us having our wits shattered by ear-splitting noises. It was lovely. We got over it. Sort of.

Thing is, we suspect that we would be fine here even if there was a fire or carbon monoxide leak (the only possible source of carbon monoxide in the Rat Hole would be the pellet stove, since there's no natural gas or forced air or anything here). The Rat Hole is so drafty the carbon monoxide or the smoke would probably just drift right out.

We also got our security deposit and half month's rent from the old apartment this week. It's nice to have- now we can buy pex to redo the cold water plumbing and maybe buy that sawzall we've had our eyes on.

Bee Mine

We still haven't managed to install the smoke detectors. Shame on us. Oh well! They came with batteries, but the batteries aren't pre-installed, so we don't have to worry about them going off in their packages. We both ended up working on freelance projects last night, so work on the Rat Hole wasn't going to be happening.

After much work on our floor plan, we decided that we're going to try to squeeze in a third bedroom where the deck is in the drawings in the previous post. We just have to find out if the city will let us. We might do it anyway and just pay a fine. *shrug*

We've also discovered that our home isn't the Rat Hole, its the Hornet Hole. Okay, so it's not really that bad. We've only encountered three hornets. Big hornets, actually. But still only three of them. And one was dead. Anyway, hornets aren't so bad, really, especially when it's still cold outside and they're slow and stupid, but we've found enough of them now that we're pretty sure there's a nest in our attic. That's no surprise- we saw the remains of one nest, and lots of folks have hornet nests in their attics. The problem is that we need to be up in the attic quite a bit over the next year. We have to get rid of all the crappy insulation because we need to replace the ceilings (and the insulation, so it works out), not to mention run the wiring and the plumbing through the attic space. Working up there with a swarm of hornets ranks highly in the "not very fun or intelligent" category. So, we need to try to find their nest and get them out of there while they're still cold and slow and stupid.

Wish us luck. ^_^

Slow Going

We fully intended to have our smoke detectors installed by now. It just hasn't happened. The sack of detectors has been lying on the floor since the weekend. We've talked about doing it the past several nights in a row, but we've either eaten dinner too late, become caught up in other chores, been too tired, or been distracted.

That's not to say that we haven't done anything at all. It's just that we haven't done anything to the house as it exists right now.

So what, exactly, have we been doing with our time? Why, planning for the future. The reality of the situation is that our floor plan is funky, and the house is small. I, personally, hate the bathrooms. We also know that we're not going to be here forever, so making improvements that will increase the value of the home is in our best interests. Luckily we have this nice little software package that lets us take our floor plan and move stuff around. Walls vanish or appear, windows get moved, and all manner of furniture and appliances are added. We've been using this software to figure out what we want our house to look like when we're done with it. This is what we're starting with:












There's a lot of room there, but it isn't used to the utmost. We think we can do better, which is how we came up with this plan.












The only problem is that we're not sure we'll be able to afford those changes. We're trying to come up with a plan, but who knows if it'll be feasible or not. We're also trying to figure out ways to add a third bedroom, or maximize what we have now without enclosing the car port. Turns out that it's tedious work, and yet we manage to spend a lot of time on it. The hours just drain away, hours that we could have spent hanging smoke detectors. Okay, so the detectors would probably only take a few minutes to hang, and we don't really have any excuses.

So I'm going to pretend that we're slaves to a dream and leave it at that.

Big fans

After a few days of rest and hectic work (the kind we're actually getting paid to do), we got back to dealing with fixing up the rat hole this weekend. We went to Target and got a little cabinet/shelf/towel bar thing to put over the toilet in the master bath so we actually have a place to put our toiletries. We had four boxes of bathroom-type stuff. One box was first aid, one box was stuff for the shower, but two boxes were just...stuff. Okay, it was mostly sunscreen and aloe gel. What can I say. I go through a lot of sunscreen in a summer. Anyway, the shelf looks sort of cute, and it holds plenty of stuff.

We also discovered that the master bathroom has an odd smell. And it's very cold in there. We close the door to conserve heat in the master bedroom, and then when we open it up to use it in the morning, it smells funny. Hello, scented candle. That seems to be doing the trick, for now.

The big event of the weekend, however, was getting the fan in the main (hallway) bathroom working. There is an existing fan (probably from the late 50's or early 60's) in the ceiling, and it works fine. The only problem is that there was a chunk of wood sitting on top of it up in the attic crawl space. Even if the wood wasn't there (it was cut to fit to the fan, by the way), the fan would just vent into the attic space. Today we ran ducting from the fan and drilled a hole into the outside attic wall, where we connected it to a louvered vent thingey. It seems to be working, too. We'll see how well it clears out the condensation after the shower tomorrow.

There were also a couple of wasps that we encountered during this procedure. One of the wasps was dead, caught in the vent at some point in time in the past, but the other was alive, flying around sluggishly until I caught it and put it outside. BIG wasp. I'm wondering if there's a nest or something up in the attic. That'd be great for when we have to clean up there this summer. Just great.

On the agenda for this week: installing the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors we purchased last week. ^_^

Moved in

We haven't been posting because (1) we've been crazy busy and (2) we don't have internet at home any more. We got temporary dial-up yesterday evening, and hopefully our cable will be installed on Friday. I like the internet.

Anyway, we had a successful move on Saturday. Three friends came over and helped out (bless your hearts!), and the rain stayed away until we were finished. They departed, and we picked up a few more things we needed from Home Depot, got dinner, made an appearance at our dojo, and decided to start redoing the hot water plumbing at about 9pm. That was a mistake, because we didn't get finished until a little after 4am. The pex was wonderful to work with, but there were some leaks where the pex was attaching to the valves for the faucets. Oy. We did find out why there was no hot water pressure, though- the pipes were corroded shut. They're fine now, though! We fixed the leaks on Monday, so the water pressure is fine and the water is clean and hot.

Back to Sunday morning. We went back to our apartment, showered, went back to the rat hole, and got to bed about 4:45am. We got up at 8:30 to take the moving van back to U-Haul. It was a beautiful and sunny morning, so although we hadn't slept much, we decided to run errands, and then we went back to take a nap for a few hours. I went to my back massage appointment while my spouse worked on getting the dryer plug to fit (the old stuff wasn't compatible with our new dryer plug), and he finally just had to drill holes in the old face plate after an unsuccessful trip to the hardware store. That evening we started up the washing machine only to encounter a horrible, horrible clanging noise. It took some doing to get the front panel off the washer, but when we finally did, we realized that the wash drum thingey was actually scraping against a dent in the bottom. The previous owners must have used a hand truck to move the thing and dented it. Several swings of a hammer later and it was fixed. Funny- we'd never used a hammer to FIX something before. Whatever works!

Monday was spent fixnig up the plumbing, as mentioned before, and getting some cleaning done. Okay, all the cleaning done. Twelve hours of cleaning yielded one clean apartment, and then we were out. It was really sad. We both cried, because we'd had some wonderful times in that apartment. It was also where we really started our life together. We'll take the memories with us, though, and it'll be okay. We're still settling in at the rat hole, trying to remember where we put stuff and trying to find new homes for things. It'll work itself out.

Now the real fun can begin. ^_^

Friday the 13th

I should have known not to schedule installs on a Friday the 13th. I never go in for the hub-bub, but I got screwed today. No cable install. Meaning no internet. The installer got cold feet and didn't want to run the temporary line across the vacant front lot. I got his manager to make it happen, just not today. Maybe next Friday.

Good news is that the phone was installed. I am considering DSL, but its 14 days out. I bought a modem so at least I'll have dial-up. The Verizon tech's name was Jacob and he was great! Very, very capable.

I bought Rehau Pex tubing today to replace the rusting, clogged hot water pipes to and in the bathrooms. I'll probably do that tomorrow and Sunday.

Sunday may be sunny. A good day to finish moving.

Hot Water

Water, water, everywhere...

So, the Pacific Northwest has been deluged. It has been raining for days, sometimes very hard. We've been getting several inches a day, sometimes. It hasn't made for good moving weather. That's why everyone tries to avoid moving this time of year. Oh well.

Anyway, the electrician showed up today and redid the panel. It looks so much better with all that old junk out, and having that cabinet ripped out of that room gives us a bit more room, if only in terms of perception. It's no longer such a claustrophobic space, even if we can't necessarily use the walls that have been opened up. Now that the new panel is in, a lot more stuff works around the house, like light switches, baseboard heaters (turns out they all work), and, best of all, the hot water heater. Bless hot water. We'll actually be able to bathe. Well, sort of. The water pressure is only good in the kitchen sink and the master sink. Both the tub and the stall shower have craptacular pressure. The sink in the full bath is the worst of all. We'll have to see what we can do about that.

More importantly, the aforementioned rain has raised the water table. We experienced this firsthand as I dug the trench yesterday. What we learned today was that the crawl space flooded as well. That's bad enough- we don't want damp and mold growing under our house. What's really bad, though, is that the water seems to be contaminated from the leach field from the septic tank. Now there's a decidedly sewer-esque odor throughout the house. It's lovely. I guess the smell wasn't as bad this evening as it was this afternoon, and the water had receded a bit as well. We started the stove and some of the baseboards and are hoping that they'll burn away some of the smell and damp.

In the meantime, we're trying to buy a pump. So is the rest of Seattle, apparently. This summer we definitely have to come up with a drainage plan. We'd like to do it before that, but the ground won't dry out until then.

And more rain is in the forecast for the next several days. As long as the water level doesn't get to the floor joists, and the septic contamination stays at a minimum, we should be okay. We'll find out, won't we?

Prep for Electrician

The electrician comes this morning to install a new 200 amp service box (breaker panel). He will also be removing all of the old breaker boxes and consolidating the wiring into the new panel. I hope his day goes smoothly. We did a little prep yesterday for his visit. The old man who owned the house before had built a closet enclosure around the fuse box panels (which is a no-no) so we had to remove it so the electrician could work his magic. My brother-in-law and I did all of the demo with a sawzall, hammer, and pry-bar, although he used bare his hands a lot, too.

These are before and after pictures of the "electrical closet".












We also dug a trench. We will be moving the electrical connection from overhead to underground out of necessity because of the new house going up on the front lot. My spouse did most of the digging. Her brother and I removed the deck planks. The trench had to be 3' deep and 3' long. The first 2' were cake, but then we hit a layer of rock and clay and the hole filled up with water. I think the water is just naturally there because it can't soak through the clay. My spouse spent a lot of time bailing water out of the trench with a bucket so she could excavate more. She got really dirty.

Here's a picture of the deck with the boards being removed.







Here are a couple of pics of the trenching process. My spouse put on her rain coat both because it started to rain and because the trench was really muddy. Her boots sprung a leak early on. We all hope the electrician is happy with the trench.

Tree on front lot

Here's a picture of the big tree on the front lot (that we don't own). The pictures don't do it justice. It's huge! And beautiful! This tree is responsible for most of the debris on our roof, but I don't mind. The trunk splits into four branches about 18'-20' up. I think it's some kind of cedar, but I don't know for sure. I should try to look it up.

Now for the sad news. I think that the builders on the front lot are going to cut it down. The new house footprint gets really close to the base of the tree. I checked with the planning office at city hall and they said that an owner can remove up to two trees a year with no questions asked. This makes us sad. While the absence of the tree will allow a lot more light into our lot, the tree is so wonderful.

Here is a picture of my spouse's brother "measuring" the tree. He's 6'-7" to give you a sense of scale. The diameter of tree might be about 6'. Again, the pictures don't do it justice. It's really pretty big!


Here is a shot up into the canopy. The bark has a wonderful reddish hue.

Quick and easy

The appraiser showed up on Friday. Looked around, took 3 pictures, and said everything looked fine. He's going to write up his report and send it to the loan and escrow offices. Yeah!

My brother-in-law helped me move the first of the boxes and some furniture over on Friday because it wasn't raining.

By the way, I've posted a few new pics to the previous two posts so readers may want to review. The make-shift curtains look pretty good!

More moving this weekend since the rains will be light (actually the sun came out as I am writing this). We're also doing some used appliance shopping, too.

Good news

Today was a day of good news. Firstly, the gutters were installed. I guess it only took them a couple of hours. It probably would have taken us all day, so I consider it money well-spent. Spouse went up on the roof and swept of a metric ton of pine needles as well. I had done my best a couple weeks before, but most of the debris was frozen to the roof, and we've had a couple good wind storms in the meantime. So that was also good.

Secondly, the appraiser's coming out on Friday. He shouldn't take long, since he's seen the place before. Hopefully he'll give the okay and the money can come out of escrow. I guess it takes a week or so for the funds to get back to us. In the meantime, we're going to go shopping for appliances. It looks like we can get some nice used stuff for not a whole lot of money, so that's probably what we'll do. Sorry, brother mine, you're going to be moving appliances this weekend.

And finally, we got a renter for our place! A guy came and saw it last week, and I guess he liked it. So we have to be out on the 16th so we can clean the place for a couple of days, and then it will be someone else's home. We're off the hook for our lease, no harm done. We're very, very happy, even though we're very sad to be leaving our place. We've loved our little apartment. It's treated us well, and it was our first home together. We'll miss it very much, but hey, what can you do? Upwards and onwards. It's a new adventure.

Window treatment

Last night we put up the plastic film over the windows that's going to serve as pretend double-pane and hopefully insulate the place better. Unfortunately we only had enough for the windows in the bedrooms, but since they're the draftiest, that's all that matters, anyway. It was easy and went really well. The plastic's very clear, and so I don't think we'll notice that it's there at all until it's time to take it down.
















We also had a good time with the fabric we purchased over the weekend. We don't want our main computer to be easily seen through the windows, since you can see into the house from the street. It won't be as much of an issue when the McMansion goes up in front of us, but until then, we're going to play it safe. Anyway, we put up just some regular, semi-opaque white cloth in the living room/dining room, some fancy stuff in the den, and some really great, somewhat sparkly stuff for the second bedroom that looks great with the carpet.

We have to get more fabric tonight, since we still need to cover one nook window, the remaining two windows in the living/dining room, and the windows in the master bedroom. We'll probably get some blinds for the utility room window. So many windows. Oh well- the fabric's cute enough that we could make real curtains out of it someday, if we were so inclined.

Getting ready

Well, it's a new year, and we're almost there. We've packed many boxes already, and by the middle of next week, we should be totally packed and mostly moved into the rat hole. My brother's coming on Thursday- he'll help us pack, move, and do stuff to the house.

Speaking of the house, today we put in a shower curtain rod and shower shelf thingey to hold our soaps and whatnot. Sort of personalizing it, I guess, or at least making it functional. The gutters get put on Wednesday, and the new breaker box get puts in next Wednesday, on the 11th. We get to dig a trench three feet deep and three feet long for that one. Hopefully the appraiser will make it out by the end of the week, and we can get our money out, but as of right now we don't have any idea when or if that'll happen. Oh well.

We also bought some fabric for makeshift curtains, a shovel, and a ladder (the latter two have nothing to do with the curtains). We'll be set for a little while.

Now, if someone would invent a way for everything to be magically, perfectly packed simply by thinking about it, everything would be perfect. I know that we're not the first people to wish for that, nor will we be the last. This packing job is interesting- we don't need to pack everything exceptionally well, since it's going 11 blocks and not across the country, but we have to be very careful about what we put in each box, since there's no telling when the boxes will get unpacked. We'll see how it goes!

Scheduling

Well, we're through Christmas and fast approaching the new year. It's been nice to have a bit of a break. Too bad we have to start packing up our stuff now. Oh well. It'll probably be sitting in boxes for at least a year, if not longer. We'll see. At least one of the bedrooms doesn't need too much work. It's going to be box-o-rama for us for a while.

In the meantime, our gutters are scheduled for the 4th, not the 6th. This means that we could have our money out in a week and can finally go to town. If, of course, we can get the appraiser out there to check our work and give the okay. We're crossing our fingers. Regardless, we're having a new electrical box put in on the 11th, which will be a good, good thing. We have to dig a hole underneath the meter 3 feet deep and 3 feet long so that we can run the wire underground at a later date. No problems there.

So, starting next week, we're going to pack and get our stuff ready to move over. Today someone came by and looked at the apartment. Hopefully he liked it and wants to live here starting February. If so, we're golden. It'll be really hard to leave this place- it was our first home together, and it has treated us well.

Upward and onward! Happy New Year!

We're Floored

So this week we've been priming and painting closet shelves and doors and the doors to the master bedroom. They cleaned up nicely, and today the carpet installers came. We bought our carpet at Carpet Liquidators. The service was good, the prices were good, and the installation seems pretty good, to me. Of course, I'm not a carpet snob, but it seems like they did the best they could with the uneven, pitted subflooring. And everybody we dealt with, from the sales guy to the installation guy, was very, very nice. Funny, getting the house was such a pain in the ass, and everybody we dealt with was so horrible, but so far all the contractors we've dealt with (carpet guys, plumbing guys, stove guy) have all been really great. It's nice to have some things go right.

Anyway, the entire house is now covered with nice, new, cheapo grey-blue carpet. I actually really like the color, and it goes well with the poorly painted walls in the rest of the house. The master bedroom looks very nice. If it had new windows, it'd look like a brand-new room. I feel good about moving in there in a couple of weeks. It's still going to be very, very difficult to leave our current apartment. It's so cozy and nice, and we love the view, but the new place will serve us well.

I think that having the carpet in gives us a much better idea of just how cute the little rat hole can be someday. I'm really looking forward to it. The carpet changes the whole look and feel of the house, and it's not even nice carpet. Imagine what wood floors will do...

The installation of the carpet also marks the beginning of our break from the rat hole. We're going to put doors back on tonight, and then we'll be too busy with the holidays to mess with it any more, not to mention we'll be out of town. So, we'll let the carpet off-gas while we're gone, and when we come back, we can focus on actually moving into our newly-floored place.

Flashing and fumes

The weekends just aren't long enough. This used to be because it didn't seem like a long enough break between work weeks. Now it's because we don't have enough time to get done what we need to get done. The rat hole takes up a lot of our time, and we still need to keep up with our chores around our current place. Funny how dishes and laundry sneak up on you. Oh well.

This weekend we did not end up showing our place. Oh well. It gave us a good excuse to clean up, I suppose. We did buy carpet, however. Hooray for remnants and discounts. We liked our carpet place. The service so far has been good, the price was right, and they're installing it on Wednesday. I think it's a blue-gray color. We'll see. The installer fella came out yesterday and measured everything. He seemed really nice and cared about his work. He appeared disappointed when he found out that we didn't really care how well he installed it, since we're basically just using it as a dropcloth until we do the electrical and the walls and install our hardwoods. So far so good with the carpeting, and then we'll only have the gutters to do before we can get our money out.

We also purchased flashing and slipped it under the edges of the shingles on the roof to protect the wood until we get the gutters in. I spent a good portion of the afternoon on the roof. I tried to sweep it while I was up there, but too many branches and leaves were actually frozen to the shingles. Stupid cold weather. It'll rain soon enough, I guess, and that'll take care of that.











Today we finished painting the master bedroom, so once the carpet's in, we could move in, except we won't. It seems like an actual, liveable room. It seems CLEAN, and I feel good about putting my clothes and furniture, and even sleeping, in there. We're pretty happy with it. We also primed several doors, which filled the house with fumes. Lovely. It's funny how toxic chemicals in the air, even through a respirator, can dehydrate you.

Week in review

This week was crazy. Too much to do, not enough time to do it in. I can't even remember Monday. Seems like we fiddled with the stove, did some cleaning, some patching, and called it good. Tuesday we didn't get to go over there except for some patching and putting pellets in the stove, because we were helping a friend pick up furniture from another friend. Wednesday we cracked down and got the closets primered. They look sooooo different! They actually look clean and nice. I'm even almost comfortable about hanging clothes in there. Imagine that! Last night we were going to go over and actually start painting, but then we got a call from someone wanting to see the apartment. They wanted to come over last night, but we told them it wasn't a good time. They're coming over tonight instead. We decided to forgo painting in order to clean the place up. So, even though we didn't go over to the rat hole, we cleaned a-plenty. Our current place has been sort of neglected because we're never there. It's nice and tidy now, though, and we'll see if the people actually want to rent our place come February.

On the agenda for tonight: painting! And painting. And maybe even some more painting. We'll probably be doing that most of this weekend. We're also working on scheduling the gutter guys to come over and install that stuff. Once the painting is done, we'll schedule the carpet, and then we'll start moving in.

A Long Sunday

We had a full day on Sunday. A friend came over and helped, too. Big thanks to the K-bot! He and my wife primered the master bedroom (most of it). I had forgotten a few supplies, so they went and bought some. This exciting picture is of the same section of wall that I patched last week.

I spent all day in the crawl space directly below the master bedroom repairing a small leak in the cast iron drain line. I hate plumbing. This experience confirms my dislike. I had gotten an estimate for the repair a couple of weeks ago. The plumbing guy was really nice and told me I could easily do the repair myself and save some money. He suggested I get a cast iron pipe cutter/cracker, cut the pipe on both sides of the leak, and replace the section with ABS pipe using rubber couplers. That sounded easy enough.

I went to the equipment rental store and rented the cracker. The salesman walked me through how to use the tool. I crawled under the house, tried to use it, and successfully got the tool stuck on the pipe with no way to remove it. K-bot even came under the house to add his strength to the lever arm and all we did was bend the tool's arm! I just don't see how the cracker was supposed to be able to even crack the pipe! We bent the arm straight again, and I went and got a sawzall (which I should have gotten in the beginning) and tried to cut the pipe, thus freeing the pipe cracker and the leaky joint. The cut on the right side of the leak took forever and four blades. With only one blade left and one more cut to make, I went back to the rental store and got more blades. The guys at the store said it must have been one hard pipe (it was!). They offered the use of a sledge-hammer. The second cut went very quickly and I only went through 2 blades! The pipe on the left side of the leak must have been a different material, or my technique had vastly improved! I am also very thankful about not getting sprayed in the face by water from the drainline. I'd been trying to avoid this the entire time. I used a grinder to clean up the ends of the iron pipe(s) and remove some of the embossed lettering. I inserted the ABS pipe and tightened the collars. All done. I hope it doesn't leak! I'll go under and check later this week. The repair in the drain line is at a low point and I think that this is not good. When we redo the bathrooms (and probably connect to the sewer), this problem will be eliminated.

By the way, I returned the pipe cracker with the section of pipe still trapped in the tool. They said it was okay. I hope they don't charge me to remove the pipe. There was no way I could do it, though.

Oh, the pellet stove seems to be working well. It went out over Saturday night because we turned it down too far. We are trying a higher setting now. I feel like we own a real house now that it doesn't smell musty and is warm. I know this feeling will just continue to grow as the house slowly becomes a home.

We like it hot, hot, hot

Today we had the pellet stove guy over. He showed up two hours early, which worked out very well for us, and was a very nice guy. We had no experience with pellet stoves, and so he walked us through everything. He cleaned the stove, made it work, and explained everything as he did it. So now we have heat. Hooray! We could redo the pipe, if we wanted to, but since we're not going to use it past this winter, we're not going to put the money in it. He did say that we could rehab the paint job and probably get some money for it if we decided to sell, which was nice. We had also been led to believe that we wouldn't be able to find parts for it, but he set us straight. Now we feel like we're on the right page with our pellet stove, and it's been burning all day. The rat hole no longer smells like musty old house, but like warm, slightly musty house. It's great. it's going to be so nice not to have to wear six shirts whenever we go work over there. Yay.

We also did some more work with the mud and drywall. Tomorrow we fix the sewer pipe, begin priming and painting the master bedroom, and begin work on the gutters. Once we're done with the painting, we'll probably put the carpet in, finish the gutters, get our money out of escrow, and start working on the electrical.

Hole(s) in the wall

Last night we patched the holes in the master bedroom wall. I am not completely sure why the holes are there. At first, I thought they were opened up so the valves for the tub could be repaired (the full bath is on the other side of this wall), but I don't think so any more. They really just look like exploratory holes. Maybe a family pet disappeared into the walls and these holes are how the pet was removed. Who knows?

I decided to cut out one big piece of wall instead of patching the four holes separately. This way I could just use one big piece of drywall to make the patch and have even, regular seams to mud and tape. The piece I removed was 40"H x 34"W. I exposed half a stud on the left side and one in the middle which gave me something solid to attach to.



Here I am looking at crud inside the wall. Is it a shoelace? I'm glad we didn't find bones. (There are animal bones in the crawlspace under the house.) My spouse is filling nail holes around the room while I patch the big hole.

I used the old piece of drywall to size the new piece and locate the hole for the electrical outlet box. I used these nice little drywall brackets to attach the top and right side of the new piece to the existing wall. These brackets worked great! The front part of the clip breaks off so nothing shows after the install (except the screw heads, which get mudded).

So far I've only put on two layers of mud (joint compound) and one layer of drywall tape (paper, not the self-adhesive mesh). I don't know if I'll do more. The wall will likely get demolished when we start redoing the electrical. Right now, we're just trying to make a room habitable so we have some place to live. This is also the first time I've worked with drywall other than spackling holes. While this wasn't the best job, I learned a lot and future drywall work will go more easily. For one thing, I don't have to be quite so anal about my cuts and the fit. Mud covers all.

Aaaand...more windows

Window of opportunity

It was the night of the nasty windows. Nasty, mold-ridden, black windows. Not much to say. I think we used Tile-X with bleach. It kicked mold ass. Tile-X + grout brush = not-so-moldy windows. Good enough, until we get them replaced, which we will do, because they're aluminum, single-pane pieces of crap. So there. Walls were washed with TSP, trisodium phosphate, to clean and prep them for painting. Because boy, we will need to paint.

Tomorrow we patch drywall. Hooray! Once that's done, the master bedroom will be just about ready to live in. Putting the plastic stuff over the windows is also on the list, and a tech is coming to look at the pellet stove on Saturday. The stove we have is no longer made- the company went under a while back. So we can't really sell it, because whomever bought it wouldn't be able to get parts for it. Oh well. We'll use it this winter and try to unload it later.

Here's the improved window.

One down, two to go

The sink is officially in. It only leaked for a little while, but then we figured it out and fixed it. Now it's perfect. It's now an even tinier bathroom than before. I really like the sink, though, and it was satisfying to have put it in ourselves. It's a nice height, and it'll still look good when we redo the bathroom altogether.

The sink is done. Only the gutters and the floor coverings to go! We'll have to wait until this weekend to do the gutters, since we'll need daylight. We'll also hopefully be enlisting friends, some of which have installed gutters recently. The floor coverings can happen soon, whenever. We're just having carpet remnants installed until we put down hardwood floors someday.

In the meantime, we'll work on cleaning walls and prepping them for painting. There are also a few holes in the walls we'd like to patch. Plenty to do. We're also going to try to make sure the pellet stove is in good condition to use- it sure would be nice to have some heat in there.

That sinking feeling

Today was day one of the installation of the sink in the full bathroom. Installing the sink is one of the three things we need to do to pull our money out of escrow. It seemed like a nice, small step, and we were pretty excited, since it would be the first thing we did to actually try to improve the little rat hole. So far it's just been cleaning, which is necessary but more of an undoing of past sins against the house than actual improvements. We went to Home Depot, cruised the aisles for a while, and finally found a darling sink. It's a pedestal sink, which works out well, since that's what was in there before. There is NO space in this bathroom, so a vanity was out of the question. Fine by me. We pay a total $40 for the sink and pedestal and got a cute fixture, gather the rest of the equipment we'll need, and head to the rate hole. It's when we begin the installation that we realize just how low the original sink was. Seriously low. Like a foot lower than the new sink. Previous owners must have liked to sit on the pot and brush their teeth or something. That means that we get to drill through the tile, wallboard, and drywall to fasten the new sink to the wall. It also turns out that the drain pipe we got wasn't long enough because of the sink's new height. Great. Many trips home and to assorted hardware stores later, we finally get back to the hole and prepare to start drilling. This is when we find out that the batteries for our electric drill have died. Not just one, but both of them. So, we just went home. There is only so much Home Depot a person can stand in one day, and the little hardware store didn't carry them. Just as well. There are things that need to be done around our current abode to prepare for the week to come. We'll finish the sink tomorrow.

In the meantime, though, here're a couple pictures of our new little sink, even though it's not actually connected to anything yet.

Clean-fest

Today was the day we knocked out the rest of the cleaning. We got over there this morning and set to work. The master bathroom is now shiny with glory. Okay, not really, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was when I started. The drawers in the vanity were pulled out, and when I was dusting while the drawers were being cleaned, I discovered a poor little spider that had been mashed into oblivion when one of the drawers had been pushed in long, long ago. Oh well. But now that room's as clean as it'll ever be. I'm not sure I'd walk on the floor barefoot, though, even though subsequent passes with wet cloths showed it to be perfectly clean.

We got another few inches of snow in our neighborhood last night, but that did not deter our wonderful friends K&C. They showed up and many windows were washed, scraped free of tape, and the nook's floor actually looks like a real floor now and not a mud hole. It's great. Much was accomplished, like this cabinet door. The one on the right is coated with the original schmutz. The one on the left looks even better in person.











We're still trying to come up with a final plan of action. It's sort of down to doing the wiring before the carpeting or doing the carpeting, getting our money out of escrow, and then doing the wiring. We'll see. We need to talk it out a bit more. Tomorrow, at least, we're set- we're off to buy a bathroom sink and some cleanser that will get the mildew off the aluminum windows in the master bedroom, which are NASTY with the stuff. In the near future we'll assess the gutter situation.

In the meantime, though, it's back to jammies and tea and mulling over the floor plan, deciding where we want things to be, and we raise our cups to our lovely friends and the super job they did today. We couldn't have done it without them.

Bathroom mania

Yesterday evening was another fun-filled adventure into the realm of bathroom filth. Even though the master bath is smaller than the full bath, it took a lot longer to clean. So long, in fact, that I didn't finish it in my allotted two hours. The shower itself was well, shudder-ific. Actually, the tile and grout weren't so bad. Nor even the floor. It looked worse than it was. This is because there was caulking on TOP of dirt. So what looked dirty was actually sealed away, well out of reach of my scrubby. Once I got the tile cleaned, I thought, oh, what the hell, I'll get that cobweb up there in the corner of the ceiling, where it's painted. I reached up with my paper towel and swiped at the ceiling, only to recoil in horror as a black, tar-like substance comes away with the towel. Turns out the entire ceiling of the shower stall was coated with this nasty stuff, almost like someone was smoking something in there, but it wasn't the usual color of cigarette smoke. It was an entirely different black than the fungus growing on the bathroom window, some of which came off the aluminum when Mr. Bleachy Toothbrush came for a visit, some of which is just stuck in the paint and won't come out.

This is a "before" picture of the lovely vanity. Oh, what a fine tile job this is. I can only hope we can do a better job ourselves. I've never tiled before, but I'm pretty sure I can avoid caulking over dirt.

All this simply reaffirmed for us that we need to just get rid of that bathroom and make a new one. The full bath, on the other hand, is totally saveable. We just need to make more room for it. The tub might also be too damaged to repair- it seems the previous owner's workers liked to pour caustic chemicals in it. *sigh*

Here's an "after" shot. Oh, you gotta love the color choices. I don't think I will pick "salmon," but that's just me. I'm sure there are lots of people that love it. I don't know why- I'm not a fan of colored sinks. Give me shiny white any day of the week.

Tonight we return to the master bath and take a final crack at it. I have to get the crusties off the vanity drawers, and the walls need a serious scrubbing. No doubt I'll find more lovely black crap coating everything. At least the toilet cleaned up nicely. I need to do the floor, too. Fear the floor. I'm not sure I'll even be able to tell when it's clean. Oy. My only consolation is that so far, so good.

Scrub-o-rama

We've discovered that cleaning the house takes up ALL of our time, hence the lack of posts. We come home, eat, go to the rat hole, clean, come home, sleep. Every single day.

Monday we just looked the place over, documented what needed to be done, and went home. Tuesday we stocked up on cleaning supplies and bought a dehumidifier (which is working wonders, especially since the windows are single-pane and suck), and a friend of mine came over and graciously helped us clean. She gets a big, shiny, gold star, because she rocks. We worked on the kitchen and determined that vegetarian kitchens are much easier to clean because of the lack of meat-particulate grease coating every single surface. We actually spent most of the hour and a half on the stove alone, since it was gross. But it looks like a normal stove again, and once we buy an element to replace the one that's missing, we'll be able to use it. That's good, because the hot water heater doesn't work, and this way we'll be able to boil water on the stove and use that. Heh heh.

The reason the hot water heater doesn't work is because somebody cut the lines to it. Maybe the previous owner guy. Whatever.

So last night, Wednesday, we went back and cleaned some more. I tackled the full bathroom, which the previous guy had his workmen using as a dumping ground for all sorts of vile liquids. It was horrible. I scrubbed and scrubbed while my spouse dealt with the hot water heater, crawling around the house following wires. When he was done, he swept and dusted and took care of various other things going on.

Before


After several hours, we finally have a usable bathroom, even though it doesn't have a sink. Unfortunately, the pictures don't do it justice. The toilet in particular just looks like a normal toilet and not the creature from the Black Lagoon. Hooray.

Notice the brand-new shine on the tile in the photo below. Oh yeah. ^_^ The floor was also exceedingly disgusting, and many minutes were spent with a razor blade, scraping caulking off the tile. I don't know what we'll do with the wallpaper...


Tonight I tackle the other bathroom while he cleans windows, closets, and more floors. Whee hee.

After