The Sewer is Finished - Kind of...

Well, as the title says, the sewer is finished - kind of...

The whole thing is covered and cleaned up with the exception of the old septic tank. The tank still needs to be caved in and filled. However, the guy who is suppose to pump it out left town and has not returned.

So, once he gets back, the tank will be emptied and caved in.

The yard has been returned to normal though, but without grass. We will re-seed the scar in Fall.

Looking west from the house.

Doesn't it look like a dirt road?

The cats sure love it. Don't know why, but they do and they just lounge around on it most of the day.







Looking north on the property line.

The clean up here turned out well also.













Just another view, this time up towards the house.

As soon as the contractor was finished on Monday we could hear thunder. Another thunderstorm was on it's way.

This time the rain was welcome; it helped settle the dirt.





I did take the week-end off and forgot about the house and sewer.

On Monday I picked up the hammer again and went at it.

As some of you know, I don't really like to work with electricity, but the new lines and outlets needed to be installed.

As the light bulb indicates - the power flows the way it should.









The light in the closet even works!!
















One thing SWMBO insisted on having in the powder room was an electrical outlet.

I might eventually switch this out to one of those GFCI outlets.










While I was at it the old outlet box from the 40s/50s got replaced as well.

Since we are on the subject... I wasted at least two hours Monday thanks to this outlet. In order to replace the lines I needed to trace the old ones. So, spending almost two hours looking turned up nothing - I couldn't even find where they went through the floor.

The only thing I could think of to try was to shove a stiff wire through the hole in the sill plate. When tried, the wire met resistance...Hmmmm....

A trip down to the basement, and a brighter flashlight, revealed a divot in the sound dampening ceiling cover. D'OH!!!!

Back up the stairs and to the outlet box. A firm tug and out came the wires!! At some point those wires had been cut!!! That means I wasted all that time chasing the wire that went no where.

What's really strange is I don't remember cutting the wire and the father-n-law doesn't remember doing it either.

Anyway...

For those of you who are curious, the wires are not going to be left this way. They will be tacked down with these little line holders that attach to the studs.

Tuesday was devoted to a few other things that had nothing to do with the house, so I tried to make up time today (Wednesday).

Figures...no traction was gained. Silly me, how could traction be made in a house that is NOT plumb, level and straight?

It took all friggin' day to clean up corners, add a couple of studs, make a new ceiling/shelf platform as well as a bunch of little things. But, it got done.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of thes things, but I did get a couple.

Here you can see those three studs back in place, just a few more inches into the closet. I think it is actually an additional 8 inches without the drywall.

On the left you can see part of the new stud as well as the header of the new wall. The top shelf isn't installed yet though.

Now the big deal is the ceiling in the powder room. Do you see it?! Yup, that's drywall up there.

I don't mind working with drywall, but I hate putting it on ceilings and mudding the seams on a ceiling. I never seem to get it right.

I was hoping to get this sheet of drywall put up in one piece; but N O O O O!!!!

The sheet ended up having to be cut in half and installed in two pieces. On top of this one of the corners crumbled on me. At least it's fixable.

One thing that seemed to hinder progress was working in such a small space. Every time I turned around I was bumping into something or getting tangled up in something.

And here we have the base of the wall studs.

Note there is no sill plate. Since it's a non-load bearing inner wall I left it off. Besides, that is the way I found it and I didn't feel like dickering with a sill plate that would have to be on it's edge.

Hopefully tomorrow the rest of the drywall will go up. Seeings how it took all day to do what little I did today, tomorrow should be no different.

I really need to do some work on Grover!

Till next time...

Cheers!
Larry ~