Will the real bathroom flooring please show up...

Today I started poking away at the flooring. I knew the floor was several inches too thick to account for the visible linoleum and the planks visible from the basement. As you can see in the pictures there are a number of layers. Several layers of 'plastic' floors including some contact paper I think. But the biggest surprise was hardwood floors. Yes, hardwood floors. The thick, tongue and groove kind. Not bad actually and Sara and I have wondered if we could salvage them or refinish them. Not sure yet. I do need to get up new sheetrock before winter.

So I think I'm just going to set the depth gauge on my Skilsaw and cut out a perimeter trench around the walls I want to sheetrock. Then I'll demo/excavate the materials and I'll be able to get in there and do a decent job. Pictures will follow. Three days left...

A tribute to my Dad (who's alive and well)

I don't have very good timing (school/work starts in a week and I'm still tearing the bathroom apart) because this kind of a post would be better for something like Father's day.

Growing up my father was something like Hephaestus who was the god of crafts, technology, smithing etc. Whether it was wiring, plumbing, carpentry, foundation work, you name it. He's a mill wright by trade, which naturally lends itself to knowing many things. In my adult life whenever I embark upon something crafty I think of my dad. Of course I've had a lot of experiences in my life that contribute to my knowledge, so its not that I necessarily recall lessons he taught me. Rather he's sort of my patron saint of fixing and building.

The number of fixing and building activities has been rather numerous lately and so I've been thinking of my Dad a lot. There are many little triggers to do this. We both wear Hanes T-shirts, often with pockets. Our t-shirts are kind of ratty and smell of sawdust and sweat. Like many men he'd enjoy a couple of beers over the course of the day when working on some project. I don't drink very much, but when I work on fixing and building I find that a cold beer is a good way to step back and think about what's going on. I think I dwell and worry more than my dad, so the beer helps there too. Of course I drink better beer than Dad (sorry Dad, but its true :)

He'd also smoke a cigar (Garcia Vega). I tried that years ago while working construction...cough cough cough...never really took. But nevertheless I can smell it while working, or at least I think I can. He's a good image to have in my head while working. I never remember him cursing or becoming upset while working on something. He'd silently ponder the situation and just carry on, somehow he knew what he was doing....and this was before youtube!

So as I sit here, taking a break from my recent destructions/discoveries, and I sip on a summer ale (Shipyard)I remember Saturdays watching This Old House and The Woodwright's Shop. I think of hot summer days helping him work, his eyes concealed behind photosensitive lens, a cigar slowing burning in his mouth. Its from him that I learned, implicitly (he never said it) that a job worth doing is worth doing well. There was no place for sloppy workmanship no matter what the chore. Stacking wood was done as methodically as building a roof or pouring a foundation.

So thanks Dad! The frustration I feel for poor workmanship, the time I spend trying to do the very best job I can and the know how to get the job done I owe, in large part to you.

A bit better

Not the greatest picture. I was tempted to just take the window out of the wall and tear everything out and reframe everything, but with school starting next Monday I thought better of it. Instead I worked with what I had. I was too lazy to look up the details on how large the header should be, I figured 2x10's sandwiched together ought to be fine (Sean?). In any event I feel good about this. The studs are plumb and the window is level (though it may not look that way).



Sara helped out today and yesterday tearing out the remaining lathe. Now to move the previous GFI, put up some temporary lighting (we'll be at this for a while and currently we just have a lamp in the bathroom).

Then the floor. I'm pretty sure it's about 3-4 floors deep and so sheetrocking would be rather difficult. We can't get out all the old lathe at present. So I suppose we attack the floor. Hopefully that goes as planned....hahahahahahahaha

This is why...

With each bit of exploration I find so much more work, so many more things than I would have thought. If this had been properly framed it would be straightforward to deal with, now its going to take some time...sigh...

On a more colorful note

One of the blogs I follow is Farmgirl Fare and each Friday she just posts a picture of something on her farm. In that spirit (but with no ambition of becoming regular about it...and its not Friday).

There's a hole in my wall, dear Liza, dear Liza

Feel free to hum the melody to There's a hole in my bucket (a classic children's song) while reading the title of this post.

After the last series of discoveries I turned once again to a task I thought was benign. In all reality it wasn't bad, but it seems unlikely that any task in this fortress of stupitude will leave me without some interesting anecdote of harrowing tale of discovered idiocy. The bathroom had what looked to be a wainscoat around the perimeter...well most of the perimeter. I don't know why they never finished it, but then again I couldn't begin to explain any of the former owner's motives other than to frustrate me.

Turns out it was just really really cheap faux wood paneling painted to look like really cheap faux wood paneling. No surprise there and at least it came off the walls pretty easily. Over near the mysterious concrete corner though I pulled off a sheet to find the above (with the old dryer vent still in the wall of course.

Okay, well why not...then I pulled it out and saw....the exterior siding. They had just sided right over it. Doh...Doh...Doh!



Then....(there's always a 'then' in these posts), I look even more closely....



Yes that's a stud...in the exterior wall. If you've ever seen a framed wall you know that the MAJORITY of the wall is empty space. Its trivially easy to fine the space BETWEEN the studs, in fact it can be frustrating to find a stud in older homes (what with all the plaster and lathe covered up with sheetrock and paneling). But these ninnies, this buffoons, installed a dryer vent by cutting through a stud!

With what I've seen in this house so far I fear my imagination is insufficient to anticipate the antics that will be uncovered as time goes on. So if you like chuckling at the misfortune of others, you've found your blog (at least when I'm not talking about cooking or preaching about how easy it is to be green (apologies Kermit)).

Be careful of what you ask

Or be careful of what you look for. After a day of discovering the many flaws with my bathroom ceiling I decided to start the day with a simple wiring job. As previously mentioned I added a new GFI outlet to the bathroom. Previously we only had one outlet, next to the washing machine and nothing next to the sink. This led to many extension cords and much grimacing. This would be a simple job, take an hour and I could gather those feel good emotions you get from successfully doing something yourself.

After cutting out a hole from the wall (tracing around the plastic outlet box), I took some measurements and set out for the basement where I would drill into the bottom plate of the wall so I could fish the new wire from the bathroom to the basement where I would tie it into the circuit that had the other GFI on it (they would be wired in parallel). This house defies the normal rules of a locally flat space-time so I new I might be off when drilling my hole. I started small and figured that we planned on replacing the bathroom floor eventually. I started drilling, but hit something and I couldn't push past it. I figured it was a nail and moved slightly to one side and tried again. I thought maybe I was in an awkward position and wasn't pushing hard enough...I melted the tip of my bit!

Odd, no? I was starting to wonder if it was going to be one of those days. I went upstairs and figured I could drill a pilot hole down into the basement. Still no luck, there was something very hard between the linoleum and the basement. Maybe some old tile? Tile seemed a bit extravagent for the penny choking misers who'd inflicted their thrifty ways on this poor building for so many years. But as this was a fairly sheltered corner of the bathroom seldom seen...and since we planned on replacing the flooring eventually....I took up a small corner with my utility knife. More flooring. Not surprising. Another layer. Sure, ok. Cheap wood panel board...okay...then....and I'm not kidding...CONCRETE. A couple of inches of CONCRETE. I had to use a cold chisel and my small sledge hammer to remove it. It filled 2/3 of a five gallon bucket (thanks Sean!). As if that weren't weird enough, there are a half dozen different layers/heights under the concrete. I have no idea what this is telling me (sell the house Kevin....sell the house...) as I'm still restraining myself from tearing up the entire floor. But here are some pictures to befuddle you with.

Although now that I look at them they seem like tiny stairs for house gnomes...

Knob and Tube wiring

Disclaimer: I'm not an electrician.

I'm not upset about the presence of knob and tube (KB) wiring in the house. Its an old building and KB wiring was what they used back in the day. Your experiences with KB will probably vary. The KB in my house is in very good condition, in fact the insulation is a pain to get off when you're stripping the ends. However, KB was installed in an era when there were fewer appliances drawing less current. Which has made me consider that using 'green' or 'energy star' appliances may be good for more than just the environment, they may be good for your house if you're living in an older building with KB wiring. Another concern is that most of the light fixtures and electrical outlets (basement, first floor, and second floor) are on one circuit (one breaker) and most of that is original KB wiring. So there's the potential for tripping the breaker fairly easily.

Many sites will tell you that you must replace it all and all of it right now, no delay, do it now. Now, go...what are you waiting for? Well that's all well and good, but I think we have to be realistic. In the last post I wrote about how Sara and I were going to work on the bathroom. Well when we took a look at the ceiling we discovered quite a bit of KB wiring. We had been told, during the inspection while buying the house, that there was 'a little' KB wiring left. We've found more than a little. It runs through the walls and ceiling of the entire first floor. Gutting it and replacing it in the next week just isn't going to happen. There has to be a compromise.

Heck, there's a lot 'new' wiring in the house that I don't like any more than the 'old' wiring. Too many tie-in's, too few junction boxes, too much electrical tape and too few wire nuts. The wires (akin to the plumbing) make the Gordian knot look like a simple overhand knot. So what to do?

KB wiring isn't always colored coded. When you take a look at a modern piece of household wiring (aka romex) there are three wires, one is just plain copper (ground), another is black ('hot') and the last is white ('neutral'). Its a nice convention. My KB wiring however is just a gummy black color. I needed to replace a run of KB wiring with some modern wiring and put in some junction boxes. Since I wasn't in a position to replace everything right back to the breaker box I needed to know the polarity of the KB wiring. So I killed the power to the entire house, went back and took off a small section of insulation from each wire of the KB wire run. Then I turned the power back on. So yes, I had live wires. I'm not particularly afraid of electricity. You have to be smart about it, but its not going to arc across the air and melt your eyes. I used a voltmeter with insulated alligator clips and measured the voltage drop from each wire to a ground (my shower pipe). The wire with the 120V drop is the 'hot' and the other (which may have a small voltage or none at all) is the neutral. Now I know how to splice in.

There's a lot of warning about splicing into KB on the web. I suspect some of it is because KB has some special requirements that your typical romex doesn't have. It was laid in a way to radiate away excess heat. That's why you'll see them laid about a foot or so apart and why they're not running through insulation (in many states its not legal to lay insulation over KB wiring). The connections between KB wiring weren't done in junction boxes, the wires were spliced together, twisted and soldered and so they can be damaged by yanking or pulling on the wire. I suppose the idea is that messing around with existing KB wiring might increase the liklihood of its failure. Its up to you.

After spending a day replacing some of it though I have vowed to largely rewire this house in the next year, the supplies are not very expensive and its mostly a matter of cursing, grunting and staring thoughtfully (and annoyed) as you try to figure out what the hell you're looking at. But since we're planning on gutting the inside we'll have greater access to the wiring and can replace it quickly and efficiently.

NOTE: While you're rewiring or adding onto a circuit in your home it'll all make sense to you,...now. But what about in five years, will you remember all the reasons you did what you did? Will you remember where that wire went? I doubt it. So for the wires I've been laying I've been using a sharpie to give some hints on the wire and I've been writing on the junction boxes indicated the date of installation and the breaker number that shuts down that box/outlet/fixture/wire. For example I recently added a GFI to my bathroom (in parallel to the other GFI...which was the only outlet in my bathroom) and here's what you'll see if you look at my wiring:

I like a good puzzle, but once its solved I prefer to move on. Within a year, a ten year old will be able to explain the wiring of this house to you and do it justice.

This old house

I should have known. This wasn't the first time events unfolded in this manner. This past spring Sara and I took out the suspended ceiling in the bathroom. Suspended ceilings are usually a sign of a patch job over something you really shouldn't ignore. That was the case. After the ceiling was taken out we removed all the plaster and lathe and then put up a layer of plastic to keep the dust contained while we dealt with life.

We decided that since we had a few weeks before school started this would be a good time to take down the plastic and throw up some sheet rock and 'improve' the bathroom which was the dingiest room in the house. But upon closer inspection, all was not well. I've written previously on the series of morons, cheapskates and degenerates that owned this house before us. We have only just begun to explore the depths of their depravity.

Take a look at the pictures above. You'll see a number of beams 'sistered' together. Look closely...they're sagging. Why? Look closely, you'll some rough cut 2'x4's that are perpendicular to the sistered beams and cut off roughly level with the beams. What are they? Those are the studs of the the exterior wall of the upper story. When Dingbat and Dunceman added on the addition some time ago they just cut through the exterior supporting wall and sistered some beams into the original ceiling joists. Its simple physics!

So what now? Well the ceiling joists all have differing levels of sag so even if we were a couple of lazy, unimaginative DIY home owners we couldn't sheet rock over it (unless we wanted lots of cracked gypsum). I've gotten some advice and here's what we're thinking. I'm going to lay some beams from wall to wall to add some strength for starters. We don't have the time, money or expertise to consider jacking up the house. But we can prevent it from further settling. The addition has been there a very long time. Long enough for knob and tube wiring to be installed, rough hewn lumber to be used and square nails to be used as well. I suspect its not settling very much, but it worries me nontheless.

Once the cieling's been reinforced we'll use 2x4's to create a 'level playing field' to attach sheetrock onto.

There has been a decision made however, its time to start living in a construction site. We can't keep chipping away at this monstrosity some folks call a house. Not if we want to make it into a home. Sheetrock, wiring and insulation are relatively inexpensive and demolition is very cheap. Sara and I have have decided to start gutting the house. It will ultimately be better to stare at bare timber and be able to access old wiring, insulation, and plumbing easily than try to second guess all the different problems that we'll encounter.

More to follow.

Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are basically a spin off from Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. For whatever reason, I figured that I could use mashed sweet potato. Its certainly easier than making mashed pumpkin and you don't have to buy it in a can. As a side note, just steam a cubed sweet potato and then mash it, its that easy.

The cookies came out lovely, very similar to pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I think there are some things I'd like to try though, like using whole wheat flour and maybe some oats as well, but one thing at a time :)

Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Cookies

Heat oven to 350 degrees F

1 C Sugar
1 C mashed sweet potato (or probably lots of things)
1/3 C oil (though you could probably use other fats and even yogurt)
1 egg, beaten
1 t milk
1 t vanilla

2 C flour
1/2 t salt
1 t cinnamon
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda

1 C chocolate chips
1/2 C optional nuts

Mix dry, then mix wet (consider sugar wet). Mix together and add chocolate chips. Put on a lightly greased baking sheet (or use parchment paper). Bake for 10-14 minutes (largely depends on how you like them. I like mine a bit drier)

Garden Fresh Salsa

I was never much of a fan of salsa until a few years ago when we came across Sister's Salsa which is made in Blue Hill, Maine (not far from here). We didn't buy it just because it was local, but because it was clearly made of fresh veggies. It didn't have any sauce, it wasn't pureed, it was tomatoes, onions, bits of jalapeno and a tangy tasty juice that I would regularly slurp down once the salsa proper was gone. That being said, its also kind of pricey at around $4-5 a 14oz bucket. But as Michael Pollan has said "Pay more, eat less."

Well the tomatoes have been coming in for a few weeks now and I've been working on my salsa recipe and I think I've duplicated the Sister's Salsa. I started with the ingredients on the bucket and added (and recorded) until I had something that tasted pretty damn good. I thought I would share it with you.

Garden Fresh Salsa

1.5 lb of tomatoes (4-6 depending on size) cut small (makes scooping easier)
1/2 a jalapeño (or the whole thing if you like it hotter)
1 t salt
3/4 C Onion (minced)
1.5 T apple cider vinegar
1.5 t lemon juice
1 t lime juice
1 clove garlic (I'm lazy so I press it)
1.5 T minced cilantro leaves.

I think salsa is definitely a personal thing and you may want this hotter, or tangier or maybe you want green peppers in it. Go ahead and adjust, just record what you do so you can make it over and over again. Happy Summer Eating!

Almond Milk

I first came across this non-dairy milk a year or so ago when Sara bought some. We liked it as it doesn't have a strong flavor, and reminds me of skim milk (more so than soy milk). Time passed. I was reading a book on medieval cookery this summer and the authors were pointing out that almond milk was very common in europe for many centuries and that you often didn't find any mention to how to make it since it was so common the authors of such cookbooks just assumed you knew. I thought that was neat (has soy milk likewise been around for a while). Then I happened across a link one day in my internet travels that mentioned the ease of making almond milk.

We don't necessarily need to make it, but I was curious given the above. Here's the modern way. Take a cup of almonds and soak them in 3-4 cups of water (so a 1:3 or a 1:4 ratio of almonds to water) though one person mentioned using 2 cups if you wanted it real thick. Soak them for at least 12 hours, I did mine overnight. Then put the whole thing in a blender and blend. What you then have is almond milk and a bunch of tiny bits of almonds.

So use a sieve or a cheese cloth and strain the liquid. I'm looking for ways to use the almond paste that I've got left over. There must be some baking that can be done. But the resulting liquid was tasty. You can sweeten it with honey or I saw one video that used a couple of dates blended in.

But its that simple: Almonds + Water = Almond Milk. I did notice that there's seperation of the liquid when left in the fridge, but a quick shake mixes it back up. Sara mentioned that the carton's of Almond milk she's seen have "shake before using" on them, but doesn't everything? In any event, its tasty and a good addition to a smoothie.

Why make almond milk? I'm sure there are many reasons for many different people. I think its neat because almonds are a natural part of my pantry. I keep a couple of pounds of them on hand for eating or additions to various culinary endeavors. So this is a product that can now be made from what's on hand.

One man's trash...

We live in a town next to a university and so we have many young folk who move in and out of apartments on a regular basis. I'm accustomed to stopping next to road to pick over their discarded materials, but today I went a step further. I started opening garbage bags. What's more...I took my youngest along with me. Brenna was thrilled since she's been raised as an earth loving environmentalist. But not one of those yuppie environmentalists are by hybrid SUVS and organic oreos. No, if you want to be an environmentalist, pick through garbage. Not food garbage, but trash. I'm quickly getting a feel for when the garbage is food based or loot based. The loot tends to be in larger bags that end up having an irregular shape versus the kitchen garbage bags that have smooth contours. A quick peak inside gives you a clue as to whether you're about to stumble upon a load of treasure or a pile of rotten food :(

Here's what we picked up:

Meal Tray
Chess Board
various micro USB cords
AC-to-USB converter
A pile of clothes (they're in the wash, We'll give the extras to Goodwill)
A neat display case
loads of thumb tacks
a couple of plastic buckets
various rags (good for bike repairs)
couple of CDs
casserole dish (w/cover)
some baskets
A serving platter
and more!

Keep this stuff out of landfills and keep yourself out of stores. Do yourself and the environment a favor, pick through your neighbor's garbage :)