The Money Pit

New Cabinets

2007-10-08T10:11:00.000-05:00

Well it has been a long while since I have written anything here. I have just been busy. For a couple months there I was working 23 days out of the month for one of my jobs. I then was just too busy working on the house to have time to talk about working on the house. But, the time has finally come and we now have new cabinets. All of the junk that had to go on just prior to getting the new cabinets included:

-rewiring the second floor

-plumbing

-hanging sheetrock

-mudding sheetrock

-electrical stuff for the kitchen

-cleaning, repointing, and putting gloss on the chimney

-tearout and replacing the floor boards

-framing out a whole new wall

-primer and painting

-tearout of the old cabinets

-tearout of the old plumbing

-hanging the tin ceiling

The list goes on and on.

I finally was able to call up the cabinet people at Old River Cabinets so they could come out and do a final measurement. A couple weeks later the cabinets were installed.

So as you may recall the dining room looked like this:

And the kitchen looked like this:Now the changes:

The countertops are being installed right now and I should have pics up soon of those. But for now it is time to get back to working on the house. I promise to update this blog again soon.

YEA YEA It has been more than a month.

2006-11-01T20:54:00.000-05:00

I know I know. It has been since the beginning of Sept since I made a blog entry. So sue me. Obviously it hasn't killed you not being able to read a new one. I will give you some stats of how my past couple months have been:

Sept-
13 days at the fire station (sometimes for only half a day)
6 days on call for LifeNet
1 lunch with a friend
1 meeting the comcast guy
1 b-day party
1 day of golf
1 VA Tech game
Which all equals 24 days that had stuff going on.

Oct-
16 days working for the fire dept
3 days on call for LifeNet
1 day Grace singing at church
2 days meeting the air conditioner guys
1 day meeting the heating oil guy
1 day meeting the water heater guy
2 days of the folk festival
1 day meeting the window guy
That 27 days of stuff for Oct.

Now for what I have gotten done on the house. I have worked on the roof some more. The problem is that it takes about 2-3 hours of scraping to get the old paint off the roof. Also I can only work on it when the forecast does not call for rain within 24-32 hours. So that limits the time when I can work up there. But, I have gotten 2 more panels done and a bunch more patching. Only like 15 more panels to go.

Today I started working on the basement also. I figured it was a good diversion from the roof on days I couldn't work up there. So today I scraped down one wall and painted it. It will need another couple coats, but it is looking better. It will be nice to waterproof the basement some and clean it up real well.

I forgot to mention in the listings above that I brewed 10 gals of beer, but have only bottled 5 gals so far. The other 5 decided to start to ferment some more when I took it out of the fridge. So to avoid bottles from blowing up I am waiting for it to simmer down a bit before bottling it.

I also have been breaking up the old sidewalk in the back yard for the future patio. Why do it now you may ask? Well, I had a sledge hammer and a day off so why not break up some concrete? I then take it to the weird dump.

*the Weird dump*
Why is the dump weird you ask?
Well the city dump on Hopkins road is nothing but a very large pole barn with a concrete floor. All that you do is back up to one of the sides of the dump and throw all of your trash onto the concrete. Then a bull dozer comes and pushes the stuff you put on the floor and puts it into a tractor trailer. The truck then drives off with the stuff. It may be just me, but I think that they could take out one or two of those steps. But heck I can't complain. With the Richmond city sticker on my truck it is all free. Which is different than y'all county dwellers.

Well that is about it for now. If I ever end up finishing a project that I start I will post some pics of it on here. But as for now who really wants to see a half painted roof? Ok you caught me, it is not even half painted. Maybe lets go with a quarter painted.

In the Ghetto

2006-09-14T13:36:00.000-05:00

(in your best Elvis voice)
As the snow flies
On a cold and gray Chicago mornin
A poor little baby child is born
In the ghetto
And his mama cries
cause if there's one thing that she don't need
Its another hungry mouth to feed
In the ghetto

OK so this is a little gehetto. What do you do if your roof is leaking? Well, you try to go to the attic and find the leak.
Well, the attic is not accessible in the area that it is leaking.
So, what you do is make a hole in the ceiling to find out where the leak is. It will be needing to come down to be repaired anyways. So what I have done is make a hole in the ceiling of the bedroom. It was raining again today so I was able to see where the actual leak was. Good deal. But, I can't fix the leak b/c of the rain. So now I have a hole in the bedroom going to the attic which goes to the roof that is leaking because of rain. So how do you go about not getting your bedroom all wet.

The Answer is:

THE BEDROOM CEILING FOLEY CATHETER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Game Show Announcer Voice-Over) !!!!!!!This high quality, no rust, no bust, water leakage, self contained, collection device, can be yours for the low Low LOW payments of 3-- $34.95 per month for 7 months! (with 5 balloon payments of $19.87 on a rotating bi-monthly schedule for 18 months)

With this system you will receive the:

Water Collection Bladder, with Manifold and Distribution Hoses! NSA Tested (Yes I meant NSA) -Blue, Secure, Sticky, Onetime use only, Roll of Tape! For positively securing your Collection Bladder to your Bedroom Ceiling.

But wait there's more!

You also receive this one time gift offer of the patented collection cistern, if you call within the next 3 minutes!

Call Now!!!!!! Act Fast!!!!!! Supplies are Limited~

Hey well I promised some pictures this time. Here's some more regular pics:

Here's the new panel box.

Some of my plumbing skills.

The one flower boarder that we have.

And the rest of the yard. (you can't tell, but I have been trying to clean it up.)

Catching up

2006-08-26T08:35:00.000-05:00

Stop me if you heard this before.
1 Its been a while since I posted
2 I have been mudding the walls
3 I have been sanding the walls
4 I have been working on the yard
5 Yea you have probably heard all of that information already.

To be honest with you this is the main reason why I haven't posted anything lately. I have, and haven't, been doing a fair amount of work on the house.

The haven'ts is because it got kindof hot here for a couple weeks so I limited my work so I didn't pass out and fall off a ladder or something. That would be interesting. Grace coming home from work to find me laid out on the stairs.

But the work that has been completed has been varied. (In no particular order)

We had the electrician come out and upgrade our service coming into the house and upgrade the panel box. This was necessary because the airconditioner needs more slots in the breaker box than we had. The old box was a 60 amp box and we upgraded to the 200 amp box which I think would be more than we would ever need in a house our size.

I tried calling the air guy to have him come out and start on the air conditioner but he needs to get back to me when he is at a point where he can come in and install the system.

I finished mudding the walls in the hallway. Now I need to egt the sheetrock and put that on the ceiling. Then we will be ready to paint.

In the back we started working on all the roots along the fence line. I had Casey come in the other day to help me with that. He was a tremendous help cleaning out the webwork of vines that crisscross the yard. We also started prying up the sidewalk in the back. We then took everything to the dump in the new to us, yet old, truck.

Also during this whole month we have gone to the beach twice and Busch Gardens about 3 times. We have also been working some overtime and taking LifeNet calls.

As most of y'all know Grace left 10,000 Villages this month also. She has started at VCU for her PHD and is getting all of that stuff straight. I am really happy for her that she is doing what she wants to do and will be happy doing.

As far as me and work it has been going well. I have pretty much finished all of my ladder operator training and am waiting for the ominous dominous from my Capt and then I will be totally cleared, which will be good. I have trying to put together all of my ODP (officer development program) certifications together to see what else I need to complete that. I know as of now all I need for Firefighter Specialist is 2 more classes and another year or so of acting officer time and then I can apply for that position with a pay increase of 5%.
I have also been helping teach some classes with the recruit schools lately. That has been pretty fun. I am usually one of the auxiliary helpers with the classes, but it is good to watch the recruits learn how to work things out and all. The last class that I was at was a lost firefighter class. This whole concept is actually only several years old. The fire service started to realize that we had firefighters dieing in situations that could have been avoided, so they started taking such incidents and learning from them to find out how it could have worked out better. With the class the other day we had situations of firefighter that had left the hoseline and had basically gotten lost. They then ran out of air and collapsed and the recruits would have to go in and find them, give them more air, and pull them out. Pretty simple sounding but, if you include the fact that there is zero visibility, your in a warehouse which is several thousand square feet, and they have left the hose you have to use other techniques to find them. So that was pretty cool.
The funniest part was a scenario called the "Rat Trap". Basically it goes as such: There is one firefighter that runs out of the building telling the recruit crew that his crew is lost and that they need to help him find them. He's like follow me I know where they are. So they start to follow him and he is like running ahead of them yelling at them to hurry up. when they catch up they follow them into this box which is maybe 10x10 feet. The kicker is that, that is the trap. the other instructors lower a wall from the top of the box down on top of the firefighters in the box. And so the trap has been sprung. The wall that is lowered simulates a sort of lean to collapse so it forms a triangle that is smaller and that blocks the exit. The firefighter whos crew was lost (and is one of the instructors) then starts to totally freak out (which is actually possible)as the other instructors are hitting the sides of the box with wood to make a bunch of noise and add to the madness. Sadly I didn't get a chance to run this event but Graham did. When he freaked out he was hilarious. He started yelling and crying Mommy and saying I need to get the f@#k out of here and such. He would then start to try to climb over the other crew and tear at there gear. He said at one point he was like, give me the radio I need help and the person gave him the radio and he threw it out the box. The whole scenario is designed to produce a high stress situation, but to also expose the recruits to this and see how they handle it. The ideal situation is for the crew to keep their wits and control the firefighter that is freaking out while identifying that they are in a collapse and calling for help. You see, that even with veteran firefighters they have the mentality that they can get out of this on their own and that they don't need help and then they end up running out of air and dieing. So it is an excellent tool that can't be explained and only experienced.

Anyways, that is the long and short of it. I will try to take some picture today of the work that we have been doing so the blog will have some decoration and pretty stuff to see. Now it's time to get back to work on the house.

Some things never change.

2006-07-19T15:51:00.000-05:00

Well I realized that it was the 19th and I haven't left a post in like 18 days. The thing that was sad though is that not much has happened in 18 days. I have worked a bunch of overtime, I have been working on finishing the hallway (which is actually almost done, at least the prep work and all.), we had a fence guy come in but it was a little more than we thought it would be, we had people over for the 4th of July, I have an electrician coming in for an estimate today, we have been sweating to the 100 degree heat and we are going to go and look at a cheap truck today for hauling stuff.

The hallway has an approx 1 foot square portion left that I need to fix once the ladder comes back.

The fence will cost $2600 if we go with this company. We are researching how much to do it ourselves.

The 4th was fun cooking out and all.

The electrician said over the phone that it avg's $1100 for an upgrade on the panel. We will see once he comes.

We got hot last night so we turned on the air conditioner that is in Grace's office. We then put a fan in the door to blow the cool air into the bedroom. That worked pretty well so we will probably be doing that from now on. I don't know how efficient it is, but hey it's hot.

Blue told me that his old neighbor is selling a Jeep pickup truck. He said it is in good condition mechanically, but the upholstery is torn. But all I need to use it for is hauling stuff around. A seat cover can cover up the seats that are torn.

And that's about it. Sorry nothing funny or witty this time. I was up for about 23hrs yesterday and I am still sortof tired. I did sleep pretty well last night and into the morning.

Hmmmm......What could it be?

2006-07-01T15:52:00.000-05:00

Today I decided to finally finish up some loose ends with all the plumbing and such. I had to go to Lowe's for the only trip of the day. It was a good day only going once. I got some bolts so I could secure the spigot to the wall. So I got home and bolted the thing to the wall on the outside. I then went under the house again. Nothing was leaking so it still is a good day. I secured all of the pipes with the pipe hangers that I had bought the other day. So everything is going well.

One odd thing though. As I was getting the light and all of my tools and such out from under the house I see this weird object.

You see in older houses like this you have the floor joists, ok, and then in between of the floor joists you have these sort-of struts that cross in between of the joists like an X. Ok. These I think are used to keep the joists from twisting and such.

WELL, on the bottom of one of the X's is this baggy. Well, in this baggy is this green leafy substance. Well my first thought is that this nice young man that owned the house before us (and is now residing in a West VA prison) must have been a really good cook. Yes a cook. He must of had a garden and grew and dried his own "herbs". Yes yes, that must be it. Some type of oregano or basil or something. Well not being sure of what the "herb" could be I just decided to throw it away. I just mixed it in with the other "weeds" from yesterday that I had thrown in the super can in the back.

After disposing of that I went back outside and sprayed the weeds once again, this time with actual Round Up and not ant killer.

And that's about it for the day. Not much else to report.

Excuses Excuses

2006-06-30T17:21:00.000-05:00

My excuse for my stupidity is that I was tired today.

(That doesn't explain all the other days of my life though.)

I was sort-of tired today b/c we had a trailer fire last night and I didn't get to bed till 2am and woke up at my normal time of 7am. I came home and talked to Grace for a bit. I checked my emails and drank coffee. Just another normal day when I come home from work. Grace went to work and I sat on the couch and watched some TV to rest. I watched the Germany Argentina World Cup game that was on and ate some lunch.

I then went outside to work on the yard. The yard has been getting slightly jungle like again because of the rain and such. I got the weed whacker out and also mowed the lawn. My lawn is a pleasant mix of grass and crabgrass. I have been trying to fight the weeds since getting here and they seem to be slowly loosing the battle. I also still have a bit of other junk that I have been trying to get rid of such as ivy and other nameless stuff that just isn't grass. So after mowing and raking the yard I go into weed control. I have those big spray bottles that have the little hose coming out of the top and the spring loaded plunger that you pull and it squirts the stuff out of the nozzle for you. I have a bunch of these for different things: Weed killer for the lawn, Roundup for the weeds and ivy and such, and Ant killer for, well you guessed it, ants.

They are pretty convenient because I don't have to have a pressure type sprayer that I have to clean and such. When it is done you just throw it away. Well I make the rounds around the house spraying all of the offending weeds with the Round Up. I finish that bottle and go to the broadcast sprayer that goes on the actual lawn. It's one of those that you hook to the garden hose and it is a combination weed killer fertilizer for the lawn. I go around the house spraying the lawn down etc. I then start to put everything away. I went and take the weed whacker and lawn mower to the basement. When I was rolling the lawnmower under the table down there I notice that there is a large sprayer of Round up. Hmmmm. Did I buy an extra one at some time? NOPE! I went to the trash can only to find out that I had successfully sprayed all the weeds down with Ant Killer. OK, OK, you can make fun of me now, but keep in mind my excuse for the day. Well shoot, at least the weeds are now fully protected from ants. No worries in that department anymore.

Wet t-shirt contest and the spigot at Andrew and Graces house!!!

2006-06-27T09:51:00.000-05:00

And by that I mean water leaking from everywhere which leads to stuff getting wet. Not in a drunken college Mexico spring break wooohooo fun kindof way. Which would've been more fun.

But in the way of pipes leaking. Which leads us to Sundays saga.

I started Sunday by deciding to fix the other spigot that is on the side of the house. It started leaking the other day b/c the valve wouldn't shut all of the way. I figured I would just replace it. We had hooked a hose to the spigot so the water would go to the flowers and not be wasted. So I had waited a couple days before getting to work on it.

So I went under the house and spread some plastic down in order to stay a little clean while crawling in the half basement crawl space portion. I had gone to the valve going to the pipe which lead to the spigot, but it wouldn't shut. In fact that valve started leaking too. Now to give you a mental picture of the way that the house is plumbed the main water comes in the front of the house where the crawl space is. After entering the crawl space there is a main valve. The pipe then goes up at a 45 degree angle and shoots towards the back of the house where the majority of the piping is. About a foot or less from the front wall though is a branch that goes to the spigot on the far opposite side of the house. So you have the main line on the right side of the house, if you are facing it, and the forward (broken) spigot on the left side of the house when facing it.

So what I had to do is turn off the main water going to the house on the main valve when it first comes into the house. I turned it off and went to Lowes (trip 1) to get the necessary piping and such to replace the spigot valve and new spigot etc. I get back and cut all of the old stuff out and but the new piping on. Easy enough. I turn on the water to the house and the new piping has a little leak on there. I think it may be one thing so I turn the water back off and go back to Lowes to get what I think I need. (trip #2) So I am in Lowes and I realize I made a stupid mistake and forgot to put thread tape on one of the couplings. But since I was there I picked up a couple things in case something needed to be changed. It was only like a couple $'s so no worries. I get back to the house and I have to re-cut the new pipe to get it apart to put the tape on and such. (I had bought a coupler on trip #2 for that purpose.) So I cut the pipe but it is leaking a bunch of water from the pipe. I figure it is just the entire house draining out that one pipe so I have Grace follow the main pipe to where it comes out of the crawl space and into the main basement. There is a valve there so we turn it in order to shut the water off from the rest of the house and slow the entire draining of the house. Well that really didn't stop it. The water was still coming from the pipe. I couldn't put the pipe together because of the water leaking. So I figured that the main valve was just leaking by some. I go back to the main valve and close that as tight as I can. Well that didn't fix the problem. But if I lifted the pipe higher than the rest of the length of pipe then the water would stop for about 45 seconds. I decided that I would chance it and couple the pipe in that time. It worked and I got the pipe back together.

I then went to turn the water back on. This is the point where it really got fun (and by fun I mean poking yourself in the eye.) When I turned the water on not only was water leaking from the main valve, but water was also leaking from the second valve that was in the main basement. I tried to get the water to stop leaking but nothing was working. So I am thinking that if I need to replace these leaking valves then I need to get the water turned off to the house. I went outside to find the street turn off. I see every metering valve cover in-between the sidewalk and the street except for mine. I try kicking the dirt around to find the cover but couldn't find it. All the while the pipes are still leaking in the basement. I go upstairs and find the plat paperwork for the house to see if it has the water service marked on there. No luck. I go to the Richmond GIS which has a water layer on it, as well as other stuff as to where buildings are and the fire districts, police beats, leaf pickup areas and such, (you can look anything up on it), BUT NOT INDIVIDUAL WATER SERVICES!!!!! So I go outside with a small chisel that I found quickly and start poking around in the dirt till I hit something. I figured out it is somewhere in line with the main pipe and between the sidewalk and the street. I eventually find it buried in the dirt. I dig the dirt off the lid and raise it off. The valve is in my sights now, but as any good Indiana Jones fan would know the adventure isn't over yet. There are no less than 80 big black cockroaches living in this pipe that I have to stick my arm in about a foot to a foot and 1/2 down with a wrench to turn the water off. So I suck it up and stick my hand down there and try to turn the valve. It wouldn't turn. I keep trying and trying but to no avail it won't turn off. By now I have been cursing like a sailor and acting like an idiot standing outside poking the ground with a chisel saying words like this.....$#%&&;#%@%;#$%#$%;%#@$%&&&%$#$&*%^$@!$^$@^&%%&%^%$#%$#@$:%$%#@$:^:^%:!#$$!$#%!$^$%^%#^@^@$^%%@##%##@!!#%$%^^&...........And a host of other things. So I give up on the valve thinking I may be going back to Lowes for trip #3 to get new valves and a water turn off key. I decide to go once more into the breach and attack the main valve in a last ditch effort before going to Lowes. I get under the house and tighten the nut on the bottom of the valve as tight as I can and the water slows. HAHA! I tighten it more and the water stops. Victory is mine. I have found its Achilles heel. I go to the second valve. The water stops completely. 8 hours later I have successfully changed out one spigot!

After thinking about it when I was opening and closing the valves it probably just loosened up the nuts which haven't been moved and many many years. But in the end the water leaks stopped and I now have a new side spigot. Luckily there are no more that can decide to break. So that is the story of the wet t-shirt contest and the spigot at Andrews and graces house. Sleep well my little ones b/c it will be a dry night once again in The Little Brick Oven.

Where's Waldrew?

2006-06-22T17:27:00.000-05:00

There he is!
So I will start this blog the same as the past few by saying sorry that I haven't written much lately.

Now on to what has been going on in no particular order. We have been working on the yard a fair amount. We cut the grass as normal and trimmed the bushes. We raked and pulled weeds and such. Normal yard type stuff.
I bought a extendable walkboard the other day. So I am now able to reach all the spots that I wouldn't have been able to reach. So I stripped the remainder of the wallpaper/paint/wallpaper/paint etc. and I started to mud up the walls on the higher parts. It was pretty hot today so it dried pretty quickly. So I was able to sand and reapply another layer of mud. That is the ONLY good thing about the heat.
I think I am going to deem the house to be named "Little Brick Oven" or as the Norwegians say "Liten Murstein Komfyr." (Why I added that last part I don't know.) It has been pretty darn hot in here lately. Luckily it is cool at night. We put a fan in the window to suck in the night air and it gets cold enough that we need a comforter some nights. Otherwise we either suffer through the heat or go out and wander around Carytown in some of the stores and use their air conditioning. It's not super bad for me and Grace b/c most of the days we are at work so we have air there. So we will get over it.
Well I just read the last blog entry and I realized that I had already talked about the heat. Oops! My bad. I guess I will stop whining about it now.

I had finished the spigot going out the rear of the house the other day. I think I told you that one already too. Well I guess the side spigot got jealous that the rear one was getting all the attention so it decided to not want to close the other day. It didn't want to close all the way for either Grace or me. So now I need to replace that one too. The bad part is that I can't turn off the water. The pipe leading to it does have a cutoff way under the crawl space but it is rusted open. So I am going to have to figure out what I need to do to get the water cut off long enough to put a new valve and spigot in. I may just turn all of the water off to the house and do it that way one day. I need to also get some plastic to put down so I am not rolling around with the dead bodies that are buried under the house. Oops did I say that out loud. Ummmm there are no dead bodies there at all. Ummm yea I'm sure. The fresh piles? Ummmm moles. Really big moles.

Let's see what else has been going on?

We got a desk from Mike today. We are using it for Grace. It is nice and big and such and she likes it a lot.

We went to Emerald Isle the other weekend. That was nice to get out of the house and in the ocean for a bit.

Grace has a blog now. It tells about the trip and all. I am too lazy to repeat the stuff that her blog says here so you go there and look for yourself.

That may be about all that is going on right at the moment. I can't think of anything else. I could repeat some more old stuff if you want me too from previous posts and make it look like more. Nah. Nevermind. Bye.

Sweatin' with the OLE

2006-06-04T19:45:00.000-05:00

So we have been sweating lately. Not only perspiration, but pipe um...eration. It has been hot. Pretty darn hot. But not too bad at night. We put this fan up in the window and it helps to suck in some cool night air into the bedroom. You can really tell the difference when you walk from the closed bedroom to the hallway what a difference the fan makes. I am still working on getting someone to come and take care of the electrical box upgrade. I have been working a fair amount of overtime lately so it makes it hard to catch back up with people that I call.

Since it was hot last week I decided to work in the basement where it is sometimes cooler. Specifically I have been working on the spigot that goes to the back. The problem was that one of the shut-off valves was leaking. So you had to turn the water off at the next valve and not use the spigot. So I decided to fix that. I figured out what I needed pipe and elbow wise. The pipe coming from the shut off valve that wasn't leaking was copper. Then for some reason it enlarged to a slightly larger galvanised steel pipe. This pipe had a T in it so one side went to the wall and then to a snubbed off piece of pipe. The other side went outside and under the deck to the far side. So like I said previously, I figured up what I needed, I decided to keep a snubbed off part just in case I want to put a slop sink in the basement in the future, and I went to Lowes. So, I actually haven't been to Lowes in a while, but as you will see I will quickly become reacquainted with it.

Lowes trip #1- (In my head I say) OK I am going to be smart and get everything that I need so I don't have to come back again. (I guess I am an optimist.) So I get what I need and some extra stuff like an extra can of propane and a couple extra elbows in case I mess up etc. I am thinking ahead here. I pay for and bag up all of my stuff and head home. I get home and go to start to take apart the old piping in the basement. I cut off the copper at a point. Now time for the steel. "Where did my hacksaw go?" Well I can't take the piping apart because it is rusted. I can't cut it because I can't find this hacksaw that I had like 5 years ago and I had thought I saved it for a rainy day. I can't use the sawzall b/c it has a dull wood blade on it. I can't cut the steel pipe with the pipe cutter (end up breaking that). I can't heat the pipe up hoping that it miraculously falls apart. Therefore.....

Lowes trip #2- I go and get a pipe wrench, a bi-metal blade for the sawzaw, and once again "trying to think ahead," get a demolition blade for the sawzaw. So I get back to the house, cut the pipe with the bimetal sawzaw blade like a hot knife through butta, and get to work on assembling my pieces. I cut the pipes to the sizes that I need and start to solder them together. I have never sweated pipes before, but I had helped a plumber for a week when I was working for the cabinetry shop a couple years ago. So I had as much experience as if I stayed in a Holiday INN last night.

Pipe Problem #1- If you are working with 1/2" pipe and a small 90 degree elbow do you:
A- try to heat up the whole thing and stick a piece of pipe in both ends and solder it
B-heat up one end and then heat up the other and solder separately
C-use a wet rag as a type of heat sink

If you picked
A- you got a lot of solder that wouldn't hold a breeze more/less water.
B- the other side melts when you try to heat up the end that you are working on.
C- DING DING DING you are smarter than I am

OK that took a while to figure out, though, why the stuff wasn't holding together or how to keep it from doing A or B. So, once I figured it out I was on my way.
At this point I somehow transitioned into DAY 2 of the operation. It all blurs together after a while.

So I get everything together and go to turn on the water. Well you may have had a vision of the Titanic when you read that first line, but it really wasn't that bad. I did have one elbow leaking though. More solder does not equal not leaking though I found out. So I cut out the elbow.

Lowes trip #3- I go back and pick up something like 4 more elbows and approx 4 couplings. I AM NOT GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE ANOTHER TRIP BACK HERE AGAIN. With that said, I didn't. I got back and started putting the pipes back together.

Somewhere around day 3 of the pipe campaign.

I get everything together. I have only burnt myself twice with hot solder. I only got a little poison ivy on my hand from crawling under the deck to put on some pipe hangers. I only have 2 fingers that don't have sticky stuff on them from the spray foam that collects everything when you get it on your hands. AND I have water coming out the back and no longer dripping in the basement. All I have left is to make a bracket for the spigot to connect it to the deck frame.

And that is the rest of that story.

When a problem comes along you must whip it.

2006-05-26T19:12:00.000-05:00

So the past 2 days have been fairly productive. I finished sanding all of the lower portion of the hallway and stairs. It is fairly non-wavy now, which is good. I had a chance to mow the lawn and rake the front and the back to get rid of the weeds. Grace and I also worked on the back along the fence. We decided to go ahead and just chop everything down. So I took the chainsaw and started going at it. It worked fine. At least now we can get to all of the vines and start to get rid of those too. Then we can finally have room to put up the fence.

Today I had to go to Hanover to get some paint stripper. I came home and started to spray some of the weeds in the back. Well it started to thunder so I figured it was going to rain. So I moved inside and started to work on the window sill again to remove all of the paint. And thats about it.

I will start to work more on stripping the trim and working on mudding the higher stuff on the walls.

Until then I will:
whip it
into shape
shape it up
get straight
go forward
move ahead
try to detect
it it's not too late
to whip it
whip it good
When a good time turns around
You must whip it
You will never live it down
Unless you whip it
No one gets their way
Until they whip it
I say whip it
Whip it good

OH DEVO. WHAT MAKES YOU SO WISE WITH THE WORDS THAT ARE NEEDED TO MOTIVATE US?

What is REALLY in a title?

2006-05-19T17:01:00.000-05:00

Is it supposed to give the reader a quick couple words that would dually impact and summarize the article/book/whatever? I am not very good with titles as you may see.

Anyways. Once again I have been busy with work. So busy that I finally finished applying the most recent round of mud on the wall. Ok OK, I know, I did spend a lot of the day catching up on other stuff such as TV shows and internet stuff etc. But I needed to relax for a bit. For some reason I have been a little on edge with many puzzles. This may sound odd, but for some reason there have been many puzzles and riddles that have crept up on me lately. You may even be puzzled about what I am talking about. Well, for one thing I have been reading the Da Vinci code. Grace recommended that I read it before going to the movie. That book is pretty good and it has the operative word of the day "puzzles".

Next, we have both been keeping up with LOST the TV show. That show is puzzling and addictive within itself. BUT, now they have this ARG (alternate reality game) on the web. It is hard to explain but, there are clues hidden on the web and in TV commercials which sortof correspond with the LOST TV show. I was kindof happy today b/c I actually found a clue before a bunch of other people on the BLOGS that I am reading about the subject. I think it was b/c it occurred during lunch when people were away from their desks. I don't particular;y do well on the ARG b/c there are a lot of other people on there that know how to read source code and break down flash movies and such on the web to find the clues. I just kindof keep up with what they find and say "AHHHH that's what is going on", in my head not out loud.

This isn't really puzzle related but, for some reason I just started listening to NPR again. I listen every so often but I actually am listening to it right now. I don't know why, it is just sortof puzzling. I guess it is b/c I like watching the news sometimes and haven't had a chance to do it lately so I can listen and do other stuff at the same time. Very puzzling. Why am I not listening to music? I don't know. Well whatever. It's not killing anyone.

What really may be puzzling is where I am going with this blog today. Well nowhere really, I just felt like rambling on about nothing.

I could tell you that Grace and I had a fun night on our one year anniversary. We went to Edo's Squid and then to a play at the Firehouse Theater. That was fun. We did have some trouble with the cab company but we got over it. They were just really slow and such.

That's about all. I am helping with a training burn tomorrow for the cadets in the high school tech center program that the county is putting on. So no working on the house tomorrow. Then I work Sun. Mon I have off so I will sand the walls or cut the grass or something. Then more overtime on Tues. Then work on Wed. So don't expect to see much progress on the house for the next week or so. Eventually it will get done. And that's about it. Talk later.

Do you ever feel like you do the same thing every day?

2006-05-11T15:27:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I do. Then I think to myself, "Self, you have thought of this before. Ergo you have done this same thing before." So what did I do yesterday you ask? Take a look at the past blogs and you may see a trend.
I:
A-Sanded
B-Put mud up
C-Went on a LifeNet call
D-Worked at the fire station

The answer for yesterday was...............
A-Sanded
Therefore the answer for today is...........
B- put more mud up

OH I forgot I did do something fun and exciting and different yesterday.
I went on the roof and crawled around in the attic for a while. Why would I do this you may ask. Well the roof is leaking in the bedroom. Isn't that exciting? (insert hint of sarcasm here) So I went on the roof to look for holes. You may ask (if you are weird like me and have conversations in your head sometimes) but Andrew you only have a short ladder how did you get to the roof?
Well my fine friend, I have a super secret spy hatch in the attic that goes to the roof. Actually if I were inclined to I could probably break into every single house on my side of the block just by going through everyone's hatch that is on their roof. None of them are locked. At least I am guessing. And I could easily jump from roof to roof. That reminds me I was going to get a lock for that sometime.
I also cut the grass yesterday. The grass is coming along well. I have been aggressively been trying to kill all the weeds and moss with chemicals and raking. I rake the back yard about once or twice a week and it leaves the strong grass but gets rid of the moss and weeds that aren't as strong as grass.
I think I will go and get some pics that I have been promising. BRB

Here's the back yard from the upstairs. You can see the weeds dying and the leftover regular grass.

Here is the border that we made a week or so ago.

Here is a pic of the garage sans vines.

Here's the hallway going down the stairs. You can see some of the still damp mud in it.

that's all I feel like loading up right now. Oh wait here's a good pic of everybody's favorite singer.

Kit save me from this photo shoot now. Is it just me or is the Pepsi bottle throwing up in the picture? Ok maybe we are both puking. Anyways I will leave you on that great note.

Hot Off the Press

2006-05-10T12:19:00.000-05:00

I know that there are extremists for every point of view of anything. But, for some reason this doesn't seem to fit together:
http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=34089

Where in the Bible does it say "Thou shallt dress up like a ninja before burning down an adult book store?" I can't find that particular passage. Sorry.

Title we don' need need no stinkin title

2006-05-05T20:47:00.000-05:00

So......lately people thought we have died or something since we haven't done anything on the blog. Well in all honesty it's b/c I haven't had the time. In between of work and all I have been working on the house. The remainder is a summary of the stuff we have been doing:
Mud and cutting.
That is about it.
I have been mudding the wall and sanding it off. Mudding the wall and sanding it off. you see the problem is that it takes many layers to try to get it all nice and smooth. But.....there are a lot of ridges and valleys in our walls so it is taking many steps to get it right. I always seem to find a spot that I had missed before so I have to mud that up and then sand it flush with the rest of the wall. I think eventually our hallway will be about 2 feet wide with all the mud I am putting on it. But hey it will be smooth like a babies butt.
I worked outside some when it was nice too. I finally got all the roots off of the wall on the garage. We also had this funky looking tree in the back. It was kindof cool looking in a Joshua tree mixed with vines kindof way. Almost like a super big bonzi tree. Well I was cleaning out vines around the area and I was looking at the tree. Then I pushed against the tree. It moved too much to be a tree. You actually couldn't really see the tree b/c of all the vines growing around it which is some of its appeal. But I got to thinking. That is a weak tree, I said to myself. It looks cool but it may fall soon. So since I had called the city to do a bulk pickup of yard stuff I decided to cut the tree down. Well believe it or not there wasn't a tree there at all. Just 5 vines about 2" thick. I think what happened was that there used to be a tree there, but, the vines wrapped themselves around the tree and killed it. Then the tree eventually rotted out from under the vines but the vines lived. So they kept the shape of the original tree. All that actually was there was the vines. Pretty wacky. I will have to get a pic of it to show you. So I cut up the vine/tree and put it on the plie to be picked up. They came by and picked up the pile today which was pretty cool.
And thats about it. I logged in 43 overtime hours in the past 2 weeks and several LifeNet calls so thats all I have had time to do. I will get the pics up soon and let y'all see what has been going on.

By the way........

2006-04-23T20:36:00.000-05:00

I didn't realize that I had the default settings of "You can't type on this blog without getting a blog name first. Option" So I switched it so anyone could leave a comment on if they want. SO .......type away all those who are BLOG NAMELESS

Sunday

2006-04-23T20:33:00.000-05:00

See yesterday blog for what I did for most of the day today. Yes, I am being lazy and not typing out the same thing again. In addition I finally got a chance to cut the grass. I needed to since it was looking like a rainforest out there with all the vines and deep grass and such. So I cut the grass and weed whacked right before going to Graces parents for dinner. That is pretty much the extent of my weekend.

Playin' in the mud

2006-04-22T18:18:00.000-05:00

Well after working overtime and LifeNet calls for the past week I finally got a chance to work on the house again. Today I played in the mud while inside. I spent pretty much all day filling in all the holes and cracks and such on the walls of the hallway. It's hard to believe but the hallway is getting closer to being done. I fugure at this rate it should only take about 2 years to do the whole house. Well we have the time. Thats about all. I will get some more pics up once I am totally done prepping the walls.

Sorry

2006-04-14T12:11:00.000-05:00

I haven't had the time to post on here lately but I have been doing some work. Mainly for the past 3 days I have been working on the yard since it was nice out. We have this little border right beside the back porch that we first took out the majority of the weeds, vines and other miscellaneous junk that was growing in there. We then dug down about 8" and tossed in some manure and loosened everything on up. We had gotten some free plants and bulbs from this lady at Graces work and we planted those in the border. We then mulched it on up to make it all nice. That all took a couple days b/c we both had several Lifenet calls during this time and I slept for a day to recover.
OH, I forgot to mention the battle that I had going on with the city garbage dept. In that border that we dug out we had some cinder blocks that were like some kind of ghetto edging. Well we took those out and threw them in the trash so the garbage men would take them away. Well they didn't pick up our trash when the trash pickup day came around. I called them up and let them know that they didn't pick up the trash. They said they would come back and pick it up again. Well they still never picked up the trash. So I called them again. They said that they don't pick up construction debris. Well I know that they pick up yard waste b/c I have researched this stuff before since I have been working on the yard and such and I told the lady "but, this is yard debris." I got them out of the yard. Well she told me since they were cinder blocks and they consider that construction debris and not yard debris. Blah blah blah. So I had to take all the blocks out of the garbage can. I asked the lady, "well do you pick it up for bulk pick up?" She said, "no" and that I would have to take it to the transfer station to get rid of it. I asked her how was I supposed to do that since all I have is a Honda Civic. She couldn't help me on that aspect so now I have a decorative column of cinder blocks in the back yard.
Anyways so today I was planning on mowing the yard. I trimmed it up some with the weed whacker and tried to get some more of the vines down off the fencing. I didn't know until now that the vines on the garage side have traveled all the way to the other side of the yard (approx 15') to the other fence and are the same vine that is growing in the opposite side fence. I found this out by basically grabbing one side on the fence and pulling the vine across the yard to the garage and cutting it off there. These things are non-stop. Well I didn't get all of them pulled up, but I did rake away a lot of the crabgrass and other non-grass stuff that is chocking out the grass in the back. I was going to mow the lawn, but the rain started to come so I threw down some more crabgrass killer so it would soak into the grass and that's about it. For the rest of the weekend and next several days I will be helping Jason get his stuff back from his evil ex and work tonight for a couple hours at the fire station for Danielle. I am then working for 48 hours at station 3 and then station 2 for overtime. So I won't be doing any more work on the house till Mon or so. I hope to plaster up everything soon so we can start painting in the hallway or work on the yard some more depending on how the weather is.

When I actually started working......

2006-04-07T17:24:00.000-05:00

I finally finished taking off all of the trim, and sanding all of the walls. I haven't had a chance to try to figure out how to reach those un-reachable spots yet (at least on my own). I would rather do it while Grace is here in case I fall an break my neck she could call 911 and hold c-spine for me. AHHHH.....Love is a beautiful thing. So as I sit here with the windows open, a pretty day is upon us. The chirping birds (tweet tweet); the lovely breeze (whoooosh whoooosh); the sent of pot coming in from the neighbors smoking out on the front porch of their house. What? Yea, the gangsta's next door spend a little time out on their porch smoking pot. Not cool. But otherwise everything is going alright in the hood.

I have jokes sometimes

2006-04-07T11:41:00.000-05:00

This is off the topic, but:
So I have been at this new fire station since Dec. During this time it has come to the attention to some of the people there that I have thick hair. I also have a fair amount of thick hair. I like it so I don't care. WELL........ You may or may not know that we like to make fun of each other at the station. Some of the people there have started to call me toupe b/c of my golden locks. This is coming mainly from this guy that doesn't have any hair. (jealousy ensues.) So I decided I needed to get him back. I went out the other day to premier and bought myself a bald skull cap. I then proceeded to buy Chet (the main instigator) a wig. So last night when he mentioned toupe at dinner I stormed out of the room. I heard some laughter and all as I went out like OH No and maybe "going postal" was mentioned. I went to the locker room and put on the baldcap and carried the wig down the hall. As I am walking down the hall I yell I am tired of y'all making comments about my hair (you know to build it up and all). I walk into the kitchen and everyone cracks up. It was the funniest thing ever! The best part was that the 2 biggest wise guy's had nothing that they could say but laugh. Just remember revenge is better served cold.

CHET (the instigator)

Graham (not an instigator but just looks funny in a wig)

Somtimes working on the house is like pulling nails

2006-04-05T21:31:00.000-05:00

Ok so literally it is like pulling nails.Especially if you were pulling all of the door casing and baseboard off to be stripped of all of its paint. You may think this is a pain. Well yes it is. But it is easier than trying to strip the paint off while it is still on the wall. At least the item to be stripped is horizonal not vertical. Well you may be thinking how does he keep track of where every little part goes? Well I didn't just fall off the turnip truck you see. I have been numbering the pieces as I took them down. I number each piece and the corresponding wall that they go on. Kindof smart sometimes eh? I have also completed a fair majority of the sanding all over. Even the ceiling. That was a pain in the rear. Just imagine holding a 3 lbs weight. Not too bad. Ok hold it above your head and rub the ceiling with it. OK a little harder. Now do it for about 2 hours. Blah. Not fun at all. At least I am strengthening my upper arm muscles by doing this.I also finished the walls. The next step is to fill in any holes around the place. There are plenty of them so it is going to take some time. Also some of the wall is falling down just to make things more interesting. I did luck out on one thing though. I think I found a good place to run all of my new wires up from the basement. There is a void right next to the chimney that would be perfect to go to the attic with. I need to check it out some more. But thats about all that has been going on. More to come in the future.

Today

2006-04-02T20:28:00.000-05:00

Today was the same as any other day. I worked on the rootball some more. Grace worked on stripping the ceiling. The ceiling is mainly stripped. It just needs to be sanded. At least in the area that we are going to work on. The part over top of the stairs needs some further investigation. I think we are just going to end up tearing it down and replacing it with sheet rock. That may end up being the easiest thing to do since it is starting to come away from the lath. Once I get a chance I am going to take a look in the attic and see what the damage is. Grace also stripped some more of the window casings. I need to take some more of that down so we can strip more of it in the future. So basically not much going on.

Movin' on up.

2006-03-30T19:59:00.000-05:00

No work on the house today. I went and helped Kenley and Mike move into their new house. They are moving on up to the East side of Midlo. Turnpike. OK so maybe its not the East side maybe closer to North. They moved into this new neighborhood called Micheaux (MESHOE) Creek which I believe is French for-big house small yards. Nah, actually they have a nice big house and a large yard too. It's bigger than my 25'x140' slice of the Earth. So that's about all that I did today. Nothing really to report.

Oh by the way I have noticed that some people haven't realized that if a sentence or word is underlined like this then it is a hyperlink to take you to another place. I its kindof like the transporter in Star Trek

It beams you to another place in the web. Some of you missed the leprechaun news clip that I had last posting. You need to check it out. It is hilarious. Just to let you know, I know some of y'all look at this thing at work and I have a mixed audience so I won't be sending you to girls gone wild or Breasts are us or whatever else there may be. Funny story though..........So I know these guys that were at work one day (no it wasn't me) and they wanted to get this calendar from some burn foundation in Florida. The proceeds go to help children that have been burned etc. All very innocent. Well I don't know what words they used in the attempt to search for this calendar, but from what they said all this porn shot up on the screen. Not only did that happen but if you closed one box 5 more would open up. They were frantically trying to shut the windows, but it wouldn't stop. They eventually had to turn the computer off. It was bad they said. Luckily their LT was sitting there the whole time and knew that the whole thing was innocent otherwise they could have gotten in trouble. Anyways, funny story. That's about it. Watch what you click on.

What the????? and working on the roof

2006-03-29T17:03:00.000-05:00

First of all people are stupid. We all know this. We see them driving down the road all the time. This only "re"emphasizes how stupid people are. I particularly like the guy walking around in the bullet-proof vest.

Speaking of trees I went up in mine again today. But let me back up. First today I made a bunch of phone calls to get the ball rolling on the electrical stuff which precedes the heating and air stuff which is brought around b/c of the heater that is dying in my basement. The boiler has a laceration that is bleeding onto the floor at the moment. (Translation it's leaking water.) Transfusions are also enroute. (We ran out of fuel oil.) Lets just say we had 100 gals delivered when we first moved in. I was concerned 2-3 days ago that we were going to run out soon so I put the dip stick in the tank. The reading was that we had 50 gals left in the tank. OK. So we have burned 50 gals in like 2 months. Not too bad. So Grace goes to take a shower this morning and no hot water. Blah. So I go to try to prime the boiler to see if there is any fuel and no fuel comes out. I am thinking the pickup tube for the tank is probably about 50 gals off the bottom of the tank for sediment reasons etc. So I call up to order more fuel. Then I call the heating guy to get the # of a new electrician that is better (ie cheaper) than the one that came out earlier. His name just happens to be Emeril. (Insert chuckles here) OK so he had the name before that guy. That's such a bad pic. Anyways, I talk to him and he will get back to me. I run some errands and come home. I then get back on the roof of the garage to start to tackle the root ball that has grown into my bricks. I start out with the chainsaw. Everything is going fine. I am getting some of the major stuff out of the way and then I hit a brick. I was being careful about how high the last row of bricks were and such. Little did I know, but the roots/vines must have penetrated the mortar in the last couple of rows of bricks. They then grew and lifted the bricks. So what I have are bricks that are basically floating in this root ball that is on the roof. I figured all of this out by taking a crowbar and prying/ hacking my way into the ball. I figure now the best way to disassemble the whole mess is to get the sawzaw from Steve (Graces dad) and surgically remove all bricks and offending roots/vines from the wall. So it was starting to get dark so I cleaned up by raking the roof (How many people actually have to rake the roof of their garage?) and put everything away.

Off the subject

2006-03-27T21:28:00.000-05:00

So we decided tonight we wanted some cake. Grace wanted to try out this new thing that she found on her dieting website. You use pumpkin instead of any of the liquids for the recipe. You mix the pumpkin with the cake batter and cook.

Easy enough. Well. Our oven doesn't have the best control features to it. The temp controller is missing the numbers so anywhere under 500 F you kindof have to guess at, which is a fair amount of guessing. Well, we figured after about 30mins into that the temp was a little low so we cranked it up a notch b/c the whole thing was the consistency of jello. Well it pretty much finished baking and it tasted alright when we ate it. It was sortof like a chocolate pumpkin very moist cake.

Well, Grace went to go and put it in the fridge and all I heard was ........"Help me I'm melting."

Well that obviously wasn't a good sign. When I went in to look at the cake this is what I found:

I guess it was a little warm when the icing was put on. Well it's still edible.

If you never saw afternoon cartoons don't worry about the first part.

2006-03-27T15:22:00.000-05:00

Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Pinky: I think so Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?
Brain: Pinky your an idiot.
Pinky: Sorry Brain. Zoink! Oh I know, I know. But I can't figure out the air speed velocity of an unlaiden swallow unless I first know if it is African or European.
Brain: NO. I don't even know why I have you around. I was thinking of why Andrew hasn't written on TMP for a while. He must be out trying to conquer the world.

Sorry we haven't put anything on this in a while, but it doesn't mean that we haven't been doing anything. Ok, so maybe it does. Technically we haven't done anything on the house, but we have been trying to earn money for working on the house. Grace and I both went on a LifeNet call on Mon which took all day. Tues Grace went back to work at Ten Thousand Villages on Tues. I went on a courier run for LifeNet. Wed I went back to the fire station and Grace was working at TTV. Thurs I had another call for LN. Grace to TTV. Fri another courier run for LN. Grace to TTV. Sat work at the fire station.

So we haven't worked on the house till today. Actually today you didn't miss much b/c it still looks the same. All I did was sand the walls some more in preparation of painting in the future. I wouldn't say near future b/c you see how long it's taken us so far. But, I would like to try this new look and feel program that has now been downloaded onto your computer. I just created this program the other day that is similar to the old scratch and sniff stickers that I used to get as a kid. I call this program look and feel. What you do is look at the pic that I have downloaded below and feel the picture. You will magically be able to feel how smooth the wall is through my new program. Lets try it:

What do you think? Pretty smooth huh? Well enough of the idle chit chat. I am going to go and try to conquer the world again, one wall at a time.

2006-03-19T19:01:00.000-05:00

I startedworking on stripping the window sill again today. As always when doing mundane work the mind is thinking. And what I am thinking is that this is going to be too big of a pain in the A$$. So I call up my dad and we throw around some ideas. Well let me back up. The thing that is going on is that we have these window sills and door trim and the likes all over the place. Since we are working in the hallway we have a lot of it, with all the doors going to the bedrooms and the base board and such.
So, I am on the path of thinking that is this worth putting this much time on a small portion of the project known as TMP. So I decide to go the the websites of some lumber places around the area to see what the prices of new stuff look like. Well that doesn't help. I cannot figure out where the prices of said lumber is on the website.
So I have come down to a couple options:
#1 If I go to Lowes or seiwers or the Depot and see that the price of the window trim is fairly inexpensive then I might just tear down the old and put up the new.
#2 If the price will be a large amount considering that we have a lot of it to replace then I will tear down the old, carefully, and try stripping it in pieces and putting it back up in the same places. Maybe with priming it prior to putting it back up.
#3 Burn the house down and use the insurance money to pay for new trim.

OK so maybe #3 isn't that smart.

I also thought of some other stuff today. Grace and I are throwing around the idea of making a built in bookcase in the foyer. This bookcase would be taller than the one that we had in the dining room of the old apt on the Blvd. Prob about waist high. Or it could be to the ceiling. Respond to this post if you think we should have one waist high, ceiling high, stained dark wood, or painted wood (prob a light color.)
I would be building this which isn''t a problem. Its just if I am staining it then I would be going with the more expensive birch. If painting then I would be using MDF more than likely. We were thinking of this bc we have a lot of books and a built in case would work out better and we have all this space in the foyer. In fact I am going to find a pic of the foyer for your viewing pleasure.

So the book case would be where the bookcase is located right now. On the left side of the pic. This was the only pic of the foyer that I had, sorry.

I don't know. Let me know what you think.

Nothing

2006-03-17T17:11:00.000-05:00

We did nothing new today. We got the majoity of the paper down. The only spot that is missing is one I can't reach at the moment. By the way, I was using the little giant ladder that I borrowed from my dad. It is working pretty well with one or actually two exceptions. Those are 2 spots near the top of the stairs. Now let me tell you. This little giant ladder can go in like 2 hundred different positions. It is worse than a kama sutra book. But it will not go in the one position that I need to complete the hall. I might have to build up one of the stairs to actually make it work. Well Grace is taking some pics of what we have done to the hall so far. So I will be posting them in a couple mins.

Here's a pic of the hole that I am repairing:
And here's the pic's of the exposed plaster:
(Note in the first pic the one spot that I can't reach.)

Long- Short Day

2006-03-17T09:57:00.000-05:00

Today we had a a long, short day of working. We started late b/c I needed to go to work and do my time sheet. I then went to Lowes to pick up some supplies. Before I left to go to work for a bit we found that the belt to the dryer had shredded. So as I went to work Grace went to the repair shop to pick up a new belt. When we got back we started to work on the dryer. That took a while since we have never done it before. We got that working and it was already the afternoon.
We then continued to strip the hallway. I had gotten some pieces parts for the wall that had crumbled so I went to work on that. I had to first make up some wooden sticks to nail to the wall. then I took the wire mesh and cut it to size and nailed that to the sticks. Next was the mud work on the first layer. I put a thin layer on the mesh just enought to have a 1/4" on top of the mesh. That started to dry so I went to work on the wallpaper again.
I am starting to believe that the hallway is the hardest place to do any kindof work, b/c it is right in the middle of everything. It also has a high ceiling over the stairs thus requiring ladder work. The bad part is all the problems you find while doing the work. It seems as though the keys have come apart in the plaster and lath thus causing the ceiling to sag above the stairs. I may be able to keep it together by basically glueing it back to the lath and pushing it up from the bottom. This would require getting up in the attic and basically squirting a bunch of glue. Then someone on the floor would take this T shaped contraption and push the ceiling back into place. It could work if it is just the plaster that has separated from the lath. If the lath has separated from the beams then that is a different story. We won't think about that story just yet. Its not a good one.

Strip'n ain't easy

2006-03-15T18:55:00.000-05:00

We started back on the hallway again. We were going and going taking off the layers. I was sanding Grace was stripping. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) Jason came by for lunch and all. The electrician came by. We started to go at it some more. Then our masks were getting pretty full of dust so I needed to go to Lowes again and get some more. While at Lowes I picked up some wallpaper removal spray. When I got back we tried it out and OH MY GOODNESS it worked so much better. I have used this stuff before but it never worked as well as this. The only thing that was holding us back was the speed of us scraping it off. We got like 3 walls done in an hour. it was crazy. We ended up using the whole bottle so tomm I will have to go back and invest in a gal of this stuff. I got some paint stripper too while I was there so we can take care of the window sills. We will start on that also tomm.
Thats about all that went on for today.

Sand sand sand all day long. Sand sand sand as I sing this song

2006-03-14T18:59:00.000-05:00

Today all we did was start to strip the hallway upstairs. If you have never remodeled a house before it is interesting how lazy some people can be. There was about 3 layers of wallpaper and maybe 2 layers of paint. It made it a little easier b/c the last layer of wallpaper was so weak it was barely holding on. So you could put a 4" putty knife under it and scrap it off fairly easily. The hard part came where whoever puttied on top of the wallpaper. So you had a layer of wallpaper, putty, paint, wallpaper, and paint. It is sortof like a the rings in a tree looking at all the layers of decorating that had been going on since the house had been built. The worst part is the window and sill. There are so many layers of thick paint on there that we are going to have to get some paint stripper to get all of it off. We will prob start on that tommorrow. We finished up by cleaning up b/c our friends were comming over for dinner. We had put up all this plastic over the doors to try to control the dust and the upstairs looks like we are in a bio dome. But its taming the dust so its all good. Back to scraping and sanding tomm.

Getting rid of a few things

2006-03-13T17:13:00.000-05:00

We started back on the jungle today with reinforcements. I went and got the chainsaw and the pole saw from my dad. What we really needed was some good ol' deforesting agents from the US Govn't. About 8 hours later you can actually see the bricks on the garage. Of course now that we piled everything up in the alley you can't see the door to the garage, but the city is going to take care of that for us soon enough.

Before:

After:

Mess at the garage:

After I posted last night I decided to try to put the new drain on the kitchen sink. You see the old one was leaking around the gasket so we had bought a new one when we went to the store yesterday. I figured that the way the drain was set up it would take the most 5 mins to change it out. Yea yea I know famous last words. Well lets see what happened. The piping was easy to take off b/c the guy just had that cheap screw on stuff. Not a prob. The difficulty came when I tried to get the main holder off that held the drain to the sink. Well I am sure there is some kind of special tool that fits over this thing to make it easier. My special tool of choice was a pair of vice grip pliers. Well the lugs on the screw were maybe a quarter of an inch long and would break off in an instant. The screw thing must have welded itself to the drain over the years b/c no amount of coaxing would loosen this thing. Insert choice curse words throughout reading this monologue and it would sound like you are live in the kitchen with me. So without being able to get this thing loose what would any good truckie do to get it off? Bend the heck out of it and break it away from the sink. So basically I took the vise grips and bent the whole overlapping lip on the inside of the sink into itself. This went on and on till enough of the lip was bent in so the drain fell from the bottom of the sink. Grace came back in after my exclamation of triumph and said "How did you get it undone? What did a cougar eat that or what?" Well, it wasn't pretty but I had a new one to put back on so it looks great now. It is not leaking a bit. And that was the rest of that story.

Taming the jungle within

2006-03-12T17:23:00.000-05:00

Today we started the day out by going to Home Depot. I got tired of going to Lowe's so we went to a different place. We got home and started to work on the yard again. I first took the tiller attachment on the weed wacker and tilled up this little area that Grace was going to plant some flowers. The tiller is small but it was perfect for this job. Grace started to work on planting and I went around back.
The back yard near the garage is nothing but a jungle of vines and more vines. The vines are so bad that they are killing the trees back there. I attached the chopping blade to the weed wacker and went to work. I started slowly at first trying to not kill any good plants. Soon it became apparent that everything would have to go so I just started chopping. I would stop and pull some of the vines out of the trees. They would just come and come and there didn't seem to be any end to them. I eventually ended up with a large pile on the ground of a mix of vines and dead limbs. The problem that started to arise was that the piles were getting bigger and there was no place to take them. Well it needs to come down so I'll just have to find another way to get rid of the stuff. I eventually got to a point where the vines were too high for me to reach with the weed wacker so I climbed onto the roof of the garage to go for the arial attack. I made sure to sound out the roof where ever I was walking to make sure I didn't hit a soft spot and take a quick ride to the ground floor. The problem is that everything is becoming a mesh weaving within one another. The branches and vines and such are growing within the brick on the garage. I cut back a fair amount but the limbs and all are starting to get too big. I think I need to go and borrow the chainsaw to surgically remove the cancerous growths to my brick garage.
Anyways I raked off the roof of the garage the best I could and started to clean everything off and put everything away. It's time to take the dog on a walk so we are going to head on out now.
Till tommorrow.
Chow.

A picture is worth a thousand words....

2006-03-12T10:01:00.000-05:00

Hello! This is Grace, the other half of the dynamic duo of home repair. Well, I don't really do any of the repair, I'm more the unpacking/laundry/cleaning half. Which, honestly, is more fun than it sounds because I'd much rather fold clothes then crawl around in the crawlspace. Although since Andrew and I have the week off and lots of lofty goals, I will probably have to expand my repertoire.
Since Andrew is providing the nitty gritty details of fixing up the house, I'll take on the more fun stuff... like pictures! Here is the outside of the house:

One of the things we really like about it is that it is not attached on either side. The porch is pretty cool too:

Note the neon green ceiling on the porch, with matching chair! (The chair came with the house. We were so lucky).

Next, the inside:

This is the foyer when you first come in. The living room is to the right:

After the living room comes the dining room:

To the right of the dining room is the kitchen:

Now so far, we love every room in the house. They are pretty big (well, big enough for us) and with some paint and cleaning will look nice. The kitchen, however, is a little small:

I am literally standing as far back in the pantry as possible to get this shot. Not only is the kitchen short, it redefines the term "galley kitchen." I think that kitchens in submarines are bigger than this. There is not enough room for two people to pass each other. Also, not the best design, with the stove and the dishwasher:

As you can see, you can open the stove. You can also open the dishwasher, although it doesn't open all of the way. The bottom rack has to be held out so you can put dishes in.

But, there is no way to both cook and do dishes at the same time:

Smart.

Next, the upstairs!

(Note the evil evil dog walking down the stairs. grrr.)

First, the little front room that all of the row houses in Richmond seem to have. It is currently painted a hideous blue (fortunately, you can't see the bright red trim. You should feel lucky).

We are currently using it to store all of the boxes of stuff we don't need right now, like books, framed pictures, and knick knacks. Some family members think we should use it to store babies, but that is another post.

Next is the guest bedroom/Andrew's office:

This is the bedroom that faces the front of the house. The one in the back is the one we use as our bedroom:

It is nice and sunny, and it even has room for our green loveseat. Off of the back of this bedroom is a little sunroom, which I'm using as my office:

This overlooks the backyard:

Just to keep everyone in suspence, I'll save the pictures of the basement, some cool light fixtures, and the opening of the oil tank with the brick on top for another post!

Update 15 mins later

2006-03-11T16:28:00.000-05:00

Snickers- 4
Andrew- 1

Two at one time in 2 different locations.

The weather is here I wish you were beautiful

2006-03-11T16:10:00.000-05:00

We had some nice weather today so I decided to work on the yard for a bit. I weed wacked and cut the grass. Grace was inside organizing more boxes and cleaning things. Today is our first day of the working vacation. We made up a list of stuff we would be able to work on this week. We continued to work throughout the day Grace in the house and me outside. We have Snickers (Graces parents dog) so I tied her up with some line and let her wander around the yard as I was raking. For being a small yard it took a while to even start to make a dent in it. The lady beside us old us that the guy before us didn't do much in the way of yard work. I am going to need a machete and some natives before I attack the jungle near the garage. But at least it's nice outside. One bad thing about warm weather is no A/C right now. I am glad it's not too bad yet.

Poop in the house total for the day so far (with a newly visiting dog):

Snickers- 2
Andrew- 1
(Dang I need to catch up)

Hang'n out in the basement

2006-03-09T22:10:00.000-05:00

So I pretty much hung out in the basement today. I finished up the dryer vent. Of course to complete this job I had to go back to Lowes to get yet another section of flex tubing. I got some hose clamps and such and came home. Grace helped me mount the exit to the wood plate that I had made going to the outside and I started connecting all the tubes. All of the hose clamps had the screw type tightener to them, so I was using the screwdriver to tighten them up. I get to the last hose clamp that connects the hose to the dryer way up inside the machine. Well go figure that is the only hose clamp that doesn't have a screw slot in it. It is just a bolt. So lets do the math here (I think I have the numbers right). What size nut driver is larger than a 9/32 nut driver and smaller than a 11/32 nut driver? If you answered "My fingers" you are right. I couldn't find the right one to fit bolt and it wasn't metric. I didn't feel like taking the thing back apart to take out the clamp and have to mess with fitting that back on again so I tightened it with my fingers. Luckly it was easy enough to take care of and get the hose tight on there.
I then spent the rest of the day straightening up the basement. We got some free shelves from Grace's work so I rearranged everything to fit them up near the walls. As I was moving stuff around I would vacuum the floor to get up some of the accumulations of dust etc out of the basement. I also got rid of a lot of dark spider webs that seem to be all over. Some spiders will be homeless this spring. Please send money to the spider homeless shelter at my house to help support the need.
Speaking of donations I got a call from Charley today. He is buying a new lawnmower and is giving us his old one. It's more of a mower than we need, but its good and works well. He is just getting a new one and so he's getting rid of the old to make way. He also said that he's getting a new weed wacker soon so he'll give us that too. Sweet deal if you ask me. Kurt, my old LT, is donating 100' of 14 ga wire that was left over from when he rewired his garage. That will help with the wiring of the downstairs.
All in all it was a good day. Lots of stuff finished in the basement. So its good to go for right now. Next week we have off so lots of more work for the future.

Not too much today

2006-03-08T19:06:00.000-05:00

I didn't really get much done today. I unpacked some boxes in the office to try and be able to fine all the important stuff such as bills and all. I pulled the Enron for a while shedding documents that I deemed not necessary. I like to shed all the credit card things that we get in the mail so when the bums go looking in the trash they don't find all the offers for a new platinum, gold plated, diamond encrusted, frequent flier mileage gathering hoopla of a Master card that has a low introductory rate of 0% and then after a year they start to rape you with high apr's, just so some bum could buy $200 shoes from thugs for life. Trust me it happened to me before, the pizza delivery guy ordered $2500 worth of stuff from timberland, thugs for life and various other fine establishments. Luckily, the Bank of America people were on the ball and stopped the payments before it became a mess. I mean I order from thugs for life all the time so I wouldn't have noticed the bill right away.
But anyways, I digress. I then went to Mom and Dads house to steal.....I mean borrow some tools. Then I started working on the dryer vent. The genius that lived here before us decided he didn't need a vent to the outside for the dryer so all the heat and lint and such went right into the basement. So It wasn't too bad. I just used the hole where the window used to be in one of the basement windows and made a small piece of board with a hole in it to accept the vent cover and the tubing. I painted it up some and as the paint was drying knocked out the rest of the window and old chalk. I then put the board up and re-chalked it. Its drying now and tomorrow I will put all the vent together. The heating and air guy came and we talked about some options. He is going to work up some stuff and let me know how much it is going to be. Of course it won't be all that simple cause I now need to get the electrical service increased also to accept the air units. So now I need to meet with the electrical guy to figure that one out too. But it will all get done eventually. Like the old joke says:
Everywhere is in walking distance if you have the time. (Steven Wright)

Day 1/2

2006-03-03T21:37:00.000-05:00

I realized that I had forgotten to take about our first night in the house. We spent the whole day moving in. The lady that owned the house before us was supposed to have taken care of the back door which was cracked from what I can only think of from someone kicking it in. Or if I feel imaginative from the police SWAT team that broke in and arrested the ladies ex-husband that used to live here. Yea thats a different story in itself how it took 2 extra weeks to close on the house b/c they couldn't get the title straight due to the ladies ex who is in jail in West VA. Anyways, So we have a broken rear door and a furnace that isn't working. First the door. So trip #1 to Lowes to pick up the stuff to fix the door. I find this nice brass c-shaped plate to basically put the door into a headlock and hold it all together. Hmmm, Mr T would be proud. "Don't give me no backtalk sucka." Say that in your best Mr T impersonation and it would probably be better than mine. Sooo then I put on the dead bolt with little fanfare. Now it was time for the furnace b/c it was going to get a little cold that night. There is a little red button on the boiler that starts it up so I press that a couple times. No luck. I call up my dad and we decide it is prob out of fuel. Well I don't have any containers to put fuel in so I go back to Lowes. Second time today. I get some cans and then get some fuel from the gas station. I guess diesel is the same as fuel oil. Ah, who knows. I put it in the tank in the back yard, adding to the HAZ-WOPER site that I have going on back there. I go back in and press the magic red button. Nothing happens. I press again and a again to no avail. Call up dad again. Well he's like you need to prime it probably. Try to loosen the fuel filter and put some fuel in that. Well I think the filter is welded on to the line with rust so no amount of cursing makes it come off. I then call up the handy- dandy Heating and AC repairman at CO 12 on C-shift. He tells me there is a primer nipple on the front and to loosen that up and bleed the air out of the line. Well there it was. It was just like bleeding brakes on you car. I had a cup catch the fuel as it came out and so I took that and dumped it back in the tank. Now we have heat. The fuel truck came by a couple days later and put a bunch in so I think we will be good for a little while now.

First and second days

2006-03-03T18:06:00.000-05:00

Well Grace and I bought an old row house in Carytown and it needs a little work done to it. The house was built in 1925 so it has a lot of nice old things about it. Then again it has some not so nice old things about it. Like the postage stamp sized kitchen. Well we will blow out a wall here or there to make it a little bigger. Anything is possible.

So I was inspired to start a blog by Grace's friend Aileen. I decided it would be a daily log "sort of" of the remodeling of our house, hence The Money Pit or I think I'll call it TMP for short. Yea that sounds good. So since I am technically doing this on the second day of remodeling I'll talk about the first day.

Day One
I was going to change out some of the plugs around the house b/c they were 2 prong and not 3 prong like my surge protectors and such. After flipping 30 breakers or so, we actually only have like 15 but I must have flipped every one twice or it felt like it b/c I was walking up and down the stairs every time that I would flip one to see if it was off or not, I finally got the one I needed to go off. I changed out the plug and I was on my way to the second plug that I wanted to do. I opened up the next plug after shutting off the power only to find that there were 2 wires coming out instead of one. I thought to myself, this is odd. So I started to take away some of the plaster to take the box out. Well I got the box out and come to find out that everything that is on this circuit has old knob and tube wiring. This wiring was put into houses pre- 1930. So I decide to see how hard it is going to be to take care of this and I decide to crawl under the house and take a look. Well little did I know they must have put about 2 inches of lime , or some other white powder in the entire crawl space b/c now I am covered in it. Luckly I had changed into some coveralls before I went under there b/c I was wearing shorts prior to that. So anywho I went crawling around and didn't find much. I came to the conclusion that we are basically going to have to rewire the entire downstairs, or at least everything that is on that circuit. Actually I will prob put the different rooms on different circuits and their own breakers just to help out on the long run. So then I give up on the changing plugs deal and decide to strip the paint and all in the pantry. This requires me going to Lowes to buy stuff which like my Dad said I might as well go ahead and drive past Lowes and throw my wallet at it b/c I am already seeing a trend of going there daily. I get home with my various impliments of paint destruction. I realize I forgot some stuff but I don't feel like going back today. Then I start on the pantry. Pretty uneventfull stuff and then I am at a good stopping point. I figure I will stop for the day. I take a shower and unpack one of the many boxes that form trails around the house. You know it takes me about a half an hour to find anything. I always end up opening 20 boxes just to find stuff to make coffee or 45mins to find a box of sscrews that I need. It sux. But anyways I am done for the day.

Day Two
Unpack some clothes to try to tame the whole box situation. The phone guy comes and goes so now we have a phone which is nice. Grace goes off to work and it's time for me to work on the pantry again. I need some heavier grit sandpaper so I go to Lowes again. I get some more odds and ends and come home. I start on the pantry. I get done and clean up. I am going to put down some shelf liner but after finding out it takes one whole roll for the one shelf, these are big shelves, I decide to nix the idea and put the cans and all on the bare shelves. We have plans to put the fidge in the pantry anyways so I don't want to waste the stuff just to rip it out later. I finish stocking and clean up. I decide to clean up the kitchen real well b/c we never had a good chance to do it before we moved in. I finish that up and decide to start this blog. It seems kind-of boring but maybe it will get better later. Who knows.