Sunday, June 21, 2009
indoor tree
So Sara had this great idea to use this "wall stickers" to create a tree in the living room. We used one package at first but then bought another one and decided to give the new, larger tree, some motion. In the lamplight of evening it seems particularly relaxing.
Monday, June 15, 2009
The Man-Cave
So its clear that, as a man, I will have little say in how the house is decorated. I tried and failed and I yield to my wife as have many men before me. But I have found my place. That place is my basement. Initially I thought it was too sketchy to work in. I've removed wheelbarrow loads of dirt, broken glass, shoe inserts, 5.25 inch floppy disks, etc. Today I used a borrowed wet-vac to really get serious and I think I've reduced it to merely dirty instead of post-apocalyptic.
In any event, there's serious potential down there for a wood shop, but there's more than that. There's potential for a ManCave. If you follow these misadventures you'll see what I mean. For example, soon I'll be adding a screen door. A what you ask? Yeah, a screen door, so that I can sit in my ManCave with other Men and drink beers and not get bitten by bugs. Its important to have the air flow in this basement as it creates a more pleasant environment and what makes more sense than a screen door.
In any event, here are a couple of hold overs from Wilbur that I need to turn my attention to this week as I'm in the mood for some concrete work.
(1) Filling random holes:
I'm not real sure what these are, but I can't think of any reason to keep them.
(2) Stairway to heaven
So notice that there is a 'step' of sorts. Its hard to explain in words what we filled in and covered up with some extra concrete. But it was yucky. Notice that above that step there is some other yucky stuff. Some of it is loose, so I figure I'll form up a ways and pour another 'step' of sorts to clean it up. There's some loose dirt and I don't want to keep 'cleaning' as I don't know how far back it goes. This way I can create some bizarre concrete shapes that will have future owners wondering what the heck I was thinking.
(3) Continue the trench
If you click on the image its easier to see the trench cut into the floor. I cut that trench and while its no work of art it did what I wanted it to do, which is to reroute water directly towards the sump pump. The trench needs to extend further to the left in the image though. Ultimately I hope that several other projects of mine will eliminate the need for the trench, but in the meantime I'm containing the problem.
Speaking of the sump pump I took the wetvac to it today and cleaned out the hole which had all manner of rumble in it including pieces of tile, wood and concrete and plenty of muck.
Pretty isn't it!
In any event, there's serious potential down there for a wood shop, but there's more than that. There's potential for a ManCave. If you follow these misadventures you'll see what I mean. For example, soon I'll be adding a screen door. A what you ask? Yeah, a screen door, so that I can sit in my ManCave with other Men and drink beers and not get bitten by bugs. Its important to have the air flow in this basement as it creates a more pleasant environment and what makes more sense than a screen door.
In any event, here are a couple of hold overs from Wilbur that I need to turn my attention to this week as I'm in the mood for some concrete work.
(1) Filling random holes:
 |  |  |
I'm not real sure what these are, but I can't think of any reason to keep them.
(2) Stairway to heaven
So notice that there is a 'step' of sorts. Its hard to explain in words what we filled in and covered up with some extra concrete. But it was yucky. Notice that above that step there is some other yucky stuff. Some of it is loose, so I figure I'll form up a ways and pour another 'step' of sorts to clean it up. There's some loose dirt and I don't want to keep 'cleaning' as I don't know how far back it goes. This way I can create some bizarre concrete shapes that will have future owners wondering what the heck I was thinking.
(3) Continue the trench
If you click on the image its easier to see the trench cut into the floor. I cut that trench and while its no work of art it did what I wanted it to do, which is to reroute water directly towards the sump pump. The trench needs to extend further to the left in the image though. Ultimately I hope that several other projects of mine will eliminate the need for the trench, but in the meantime I'm containing the problem.
Speaking of the sump pump I took the wetvac to it today and cleaned out the hole which had all manner of rumble in it including pieces of tile, wood and concrete and plenty of muck.
Pretty isn't it!
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Plumbing the depths
So our bathroom sink drains slowly, very slowly. A quick look in the basement revealed that Wilbur had done some home improvement and thus begins our story.
Now if you're like me, you've never done any plumbing. But having spent some time on earth I'm vaguely aware of the fact that water runs downhill and not uphill. So looking at this pipe makes one scratch ones head and wonder what the hell happened. There are some pipes in the way, but as you'll see you're better off going over them instead of under them. Some other fun images to share (of Wilburs handy work) include some of the ways in which he suspended the pipes:
Hilarious. What's even funnier is that these are the only two supports for the waste pipes from the washer, tub and bathroom sink, some 15+ feet of PVC pipe. If you look closely at the left hand one you'll notice its a shoelace. I couldn't make that up if I tried. I wonder if Wilbur took it off a shoe he was wearing.
So anyway down to business. I drilled a small hole in the bottom of the lower elbow to let the water, that I knew would be sitting there, drain out.
After a while I just cut through the pipe. Here's what I found inside:
So some genius decided to pour something down the sink, I'm not sure if its sheetrocking mud, spackle, paint or what. But its clear that this build up wasn't helping matters any.
By the way, when you go to cut PVC do NOT buy the little hacksaw (bottom saw in image) you'll see next to the pipe supplies. That makes too much sense. Its junk. The tool I ended up using was a backsaw (top saw in image). Its made for wood, but the stiff make of it with the fine teeth worked wonders on the pipes.
After a certain amount of cussing, measuring, cutting, priming, gluing, more cussing, and some more gluing I got the pieces together in what seems to be an improved fashion. Make note however to dry fit everything to make sure it fits. Once you start gluing you've got only moments before things set up and you can't be messing around.
You'll notice a little something on the copper pipe below the new PVC. Its a bit of pipe insulation. The PVC is not resting on the copper pipe, but since the pipe is a heating pipe I didn't want to chance anything. I'll be insulating all the hot water and heating pipes eventually anyway.
Now if you're like me, you've never done any plumbing. But having spent some time on earth I'm vaguely aware of the fact that water runs downhill and not uphill. So looking at this pipe makes one scratch ones head and wonder what the hell happened. There are some pipes in the way, but as you'll see you're better off going over them instead of under them. Some other fun images to share (of Wilburs handy work) include some of the ways in which he suspended the pipes:
 |  |
Hilarious. What's even funnier is that these are the only two supports for the waste pipes from the washer, tub and bathroom sink, some 15+ feet of PVC pipe. If you look closely at the left hand one you'll notice its a shoelace. I couldn't make that up if I tried. I wonder if Wilbur took it off a shoe he was wearing.
So anyway down to business. I drilled a small hole in the bottom of the lower elbow to let the water, that I knew would be sitting there, drain out.
After a while I just cut through the pipe. Here's what I found inside:
So some genius decided to pour something down the sink, I'm not sure if its sheetrocking mud, spackle, paint or what. But its clear that this build up wasn't helping matters any.
By the way, when you go to cut PVC do NOT buy the little hacksaw (bottom saw in image) you'll see next to the pipe supplies. That makes too much sense. Its junk. The tool I ended up using was a backsaw (top saw in image). Its made for wood, but the stiff make of it with the fine teeth worked wonders on the pipes.
After a certain amount of cussing, measuring, cutting, priming, gluing, more cussing, and some more gluing I got the pieces together in what seems to be an improved fashion. Make note however to dry fit everything to make sure it fits. Once you start gluing you've got only moments before things set up and you can't be messing around.
You'll notice a little something on the copper pipe below the new PVC. Its a bit of pipe insulation. The PVC is not resting on the copper pipe, but since the pipe is a heating pipe I didn't want to chance anything. I'll be insulating all the hot water and heating pipes eventually anyway.
Wilbur
Our house is interesting. Its got all kinds of funny little things that make you scratch your head and exclaim out loud "what the hell were they thinking?" So after some consultations I have decided to name the birdbrain responsible: Wilbur. This way I can call out his name in vain, "WILBUR!"
As you read along this blog you'll discover many of the misadventures of Wilbur and the pain and misery they cause our new homeowners. One thing I can credit to Wilbur though is that we're going to learn a whole heck of a lot to undo all that he did.
As you read along this blog you'll discover many of the misadventures of Wilbur and the pain and misery they cause our new homeowners. One thing I can credit to Wilbur though is that we're going to learn a whole heck of a lot to undo all that he did.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
What was that?
I spend a lot of time in my basement. Sara prefers the living room, go figure. The basement is the Rosetta stone for this house. Its a means of understanding who lived here, what they did, planned, removed, changed and so on. So far I have gathered that the previous owners were cheap, ambitious and not very handy.
The basement has dozens and dozens of peculiarities that I'm working on but one of them is this:
Look carefully and you can see that whatever sat in that concrete had a circular base. It was probably an old furnace. So far we've figured out a couple of things. First, they brought concrete through the basement window (to the right in the picture) at some point. We know this because they made a mess over the waste pipe and wall. Then we're pretty sure they had some extra left over and they just dumped it on the floor. There is clearly a second pour over the existing slab. The pour is of poor quality (a poor pour?) because you can pop it off pretty easily. For some reason this concrete was mounded up around the furnace which then was sitting on bricks (that are now lodged in the concrete).
its an annoying mound of concrete and one goal I have is to work at it from multiple sides and see if I can get at the original slab underneath. But I do want to be careful as I don't know what I'll find under it. So as I said, I'll work from the sides and see what I find.
The basement has dozens and dozens of peculiarities that I'm working on but one of them is this:
Look carefully and you can see that whatever sat in that concrete had a circular base. It was probably an old furnace. So far we've figured out a couple of things. First, they brought concrete through the basement window (to the right in the picture) at some point. We know this because they made a mess over the waste pipe and wall. Then we're pretty sure they had some extra left over and they just dumped it on the floor. There is clearly a second pour over the existing slab. The pour is of poor quality (a poor pour?) because you can pop it off pretty easily. For some reason this concrete was mounded up around the furnace which then was sitting on bricks (that are now lodged in the concrete).
its an annoying mound of concrete and one goal I have is to work at it from multiple sides and see if I can get at the original slab underneath. But I do want to be careful as I don't know what I'll find under it. So as I said, I'll work from the sides and see what I find.
Stairs
My wife thinks that I have a lot of projects going because I'm unorganized and scatterbrained. But this isn't the case at all. I try to keep a number of projects going so I have choice. I love working on our new home and so I make sure that I have jobs for sunny days and rainy days. I have jobs that require a lot of time and little time, some that cost a lot, some are cheap, some involve a lot of new learning and some do not and so on.
One of the jobs on my list was the basement stairs. These were sketchy at best even after I put in some temporary supports. The steps themselves are old thin planks and the rest of it was an odd collection of whatever wood the previous owners had laying around. They really needed to be replaced if I was going to create a useful space in the basement for future projects (woodshop) and storage.
I realized that the stairs were going to be hard, I had never built stairs before and had no illusions about them. I knew it would take some planning. I had taken down some basic measurements and bought a pair of 2x10x8' boards for the stringers and a pair of 2x8x8' boards for the steps.
Now these weren't going to be any ordinary stairs. The fieldstone foundation wall is not a flat vertical surface but bulges out because of the large stones used towards the middle/bottom. Also the waste pipe exits the house along that wall and so this pipe must go through the stairs. This meant that one of the stringers would have to rest on the footer (again, not flat) and one would rest on an existing concrete landing (not square with non plumb sides). This can be hard to understand in text and pictures wouldn't really help. I'll simplify: it was hard.
I won't lie to you, the two stringers are not precisely parallel even now that the stairs are done. But the solution was to keep "trimming" the stringer that rested on the footing. I'm wary of trimming so I decided that good was good enough and we moved onto stairs. There's probably way too much metal in these wooden stairs but I wanted something secure for my weight and so there were a lot of 4" deck screws used :-).
All in all, Tom and I are proud, though it took a total of about 12 hours to build, it is a vast improvement over the former stairs and it was a great learning experience.
You'll notice that they're pretty steep. They're steeper than the original stairs and that's because I was tired of hitting my head on the floor joists. So its steep on purpose to allow someone of my height to walk up the stairs without stooping.
One of the jobs on my list was the basement stairs. These were sketchy at best even after I put in some temporary supports. The steps themselves are old thin planks and the rest of it was an odd collection of whatever wood the previous owners had laying around. They really needed to be replaced if I was going to create a useful space in the basement for future projects (woodshop) and storage.
I realized that the stairs were going to be hard, I had never built stairs before and had no illusions about them. I knew it would take some planning. I had taken down some basic measurements and bought a pair of 2x10x8' boards for the stringers and a pair of 2x8x8' boards for the steps.
Now these weren't going to be any ordinary stairs. The fieldstone foundation wall is not a flat vertical surface but bulges out because of the large stones used towards the middle/bottom. Also the waste pipe exits the house along that wall and so this pipe must go through the stairs. This meant that one of the stringers would have to rest on the footer (again, not flat) and one would rest on an existing concrete landing (not square with non plumb sides). This can be hard to understand in text and pictures wouldn't really help. I'll simplify: it was hard.
I won't lie to you, the two stringers are not precisely parallel even now that the stairs are done. But the solution was to keep "trimming" the stringer that rested on the footing. I'm wary of trimming so I decided that good was good enough and we moved onto stairs. There's probably way too much metal in these wooden stairs but I wanted something secure for my weight and so there were a lot of 4" deck screws used :-).
All in all, Tom and I are proud, though it took a total of about 12 hours to build, it is a vast improvement over the former stairs and it was a great learning experience.
 |  |
You'll notice that they're pretty steep. They're steeper than the original stairs and that's because I was tired of hitting my head on the floor joists. So its steep on purpose to allow someone of my height to walk up the stairs without stooping.
Busy Weekend
Thanks to the help of my friend Tom I was able to finish the majority of the concrete work I wanted to do in the basement. There are still a number of small projects left but the bulk of it has been taken care of.
Slab: At some point in the past the house was extended about three feet to one side. In the basement you could see the original footing, a gap filled with dirt and then the plank-form poured wall. Tom and I poured a small portion of the slab by hand to see how it would come out and were pleased:
I neglected to take "before" pictures but I took some photos of what was left to do to give you an idea:
Its quite a mess to have that much soil in your basement. So we dug it out back filled with some rocks (to save on concrete and cash):
but I realized that mixing bag by bag would take a while. So I bit the bullet and had a truck come and I shuttled the concrete in as Tom spread it around. We had to tear out the "door" to the basement to allow the wheelbarrow to fit, but I had plans on rebuilding the "door" anyway. While we had formed up the lower part of the original footing (not level) we didn't think to do the whole thing so it didn't come out as well as we might have hoped. I'm going to go back and finish the edge a bit with some premix, but for now it will do. The idea was the keep the moisture down and to build some storage.
The big bump is an enormous rock that was very much a part of the original footing. That same footing has a number of supports holding up the original and still load bearing wall, so I didn't want to mess with it. If you look closely there area couple small bumps as well and those were also rocks that were sunk into the original footing.
Slab: At some point in the past the house was extended about three feet to one side. In the basement you could see the original footing, a gap filled with dirt and then the plank-form poured wall. Tom and I poured a small portion of the slab by hand to see how it would come out and were pleased:
I neglected to take "before" pictures but I took some photos of what was left to do to give you an idea:
Its quite a mess to have that much soil in your basement. So we dug it out back filled with some rocks (to save on concrete and cash):
 |  |
but I realized that mixing bag by bag would take a while. So I bit the bullet and had a truck come and I shuttled the concrete in as Tom spread it around. We had to tear out the "door" to the basement to allow the wheelbarrow to fit, but I had plans on rebuilding the "door" anyway. While we had formed up the lower part of the original footing (not level) we didn't think to do the whole thing so it didn't come out as well as we might have hoped. I'm going to go back and finish the edge a bit with some premix, but for now it will do. The idea was the keep the moisture down and to build some storage.
 |  |
The big bump is an enormous rock that was very much a part of the original footing. That same footing has a number of supports holding up the original and still load bearing wall, so I didn't want to mess with it. If you look closely there area couple small bumps as well and those were also rocks that were sunk into the original footing.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
posts to come
No posts in a while, though there are some to come. Currently we are doing some concrete work in the basement, a mailbox has been put up, a raised garden bed is being built, shelves are being built and installed and Kevin is eyeing the expansive asphalt with dreams of a jackhammer to reclaim some of it for lawn. These and more are coming. It will be a busy summer of work on the new homestead and blogging about it. We haven't forgotten you.
Cheers
Cheers
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Welcome aboard
My wife, Sara, and I have bought our first house (oh what fun that was). The goal of this blog is to record the work we do, the mistakes we make and the lessons we learn as we start this phase of our lives. We've got a lot of ideas and an...interesting old house. I hope you'll subscribe and follow us on what will certainly be humorous at any rate. To start you off here's a video below of the house before we moved anything into it.
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