It all started with...

It all started with the shower head.

Anyone who owns an old house knows about calcium deposits that break off and clog shower heads and faucet aerators.

About once every year, or year and a half, I remove the shower head and aerators and clean them out.

About two weeks ago SWMBO said the shower head was acting funny. Well, time to clean the calcium deposits.

SWMBO had a business trip last Thursday and Friday so I figured then would be a good time to do it. I took the shower head off, cleaned it out and then let it set over night in diluted CLR.

This would allow her to have a nice surprise on Valentine's Day.

After removing the shower head, and before the CLR, I removed the aerator from the faucet in the 2nd floor bathroom. Look what the house gave me as a present!!

How sweet...isn't it just beautiful?

It's the ENTIRE aerator assembly. Plopped right into my hand.


Well now...that answered a question for us. Turns out the copper pipe that connected to the aerator was rotten and from the looks of it it was slowly leaking. We knew we had a leak somewhere, but could never find it.

So now the house has thrown a monkey wrench in my plans for the rest of the week. All I needed to do was replace the faucet. Figured I'd just get an el'cheapo since we were planing on redoing the bathroom about this time next year.

But wait...it gets better!!!

I made the first trip to Lowe's to get the faucet and pick-up SWMBO from the rental car place.

Got home and installed the faucet. Looks great. In fact, looks just like the one that was replaced. I then went to attach the water lines. The end of the copper pipe (hot water) that connects to the faucet crumbles. DANG!!!

It's 8PM and we now need to make a mad dash to Lowe's before they close. We get there and buy a couple of flexible water connectors.

I get home and connect them.

WT?!?!

The male end of the water riser is a nipple connection and the water connectors I bought won't fit!!!

Okay...nervous breakdown...fight the urge to hide under the bed.

It's too late to go to Lowe's now so it has to wait till the morning.

Saturday morning I run to Lowe's (remember, it's about a 20 minute trip one-way each time). I take the old copper line with me so I can make sure the correct type of fittings are purchased. Got them and rushed home.

Here are the parts. Since no one seems to make a 1/2 female to 1/2 male brass coupling I had to get two types of fittings to make it.

Okay, I attach the first one. Guess what...it wouldn't fit!! The 1/2 coupling, while it fit the nipple, would not tighten down at all!! Water went every where!!

Okay, next trip to Lowe's - the 3rd one for this project.

This time it is serious. The hot water Shutoff valve is not shutting as well so there is a slow leak. AND there is now a water stain on the ceiling in the kitchen!! YES - my newly primed kitchen ceiling!!!

&%$%#&)%*%&@^$@(*$

I get to Lowe's and this time I get a specialized coupling that I wanted to avoid from the beginning, along with another specialized nipple. I run home hoping the new fittings will work.

Here they are. They are special nipple couplings as well as 1/2 to 1/2 connectors.

They work!!!!




WOOWHOO!!!

So, I decide to go ahead and install the new drain that came with the faucet.

The old one was so corroded it would not come out, nor would it go back in!!! I was stuck...now what? I grab the sawzall and attach a supper short blade. I cut the messed up part off and the thing came out.

I then cleaned up the opening and prepped it for the new one. I install the new one. Guess what...the tail pipe of the new drain is a hair too long. Not a big deal. I make the adjustment and go to reattach the p-trap and the slip-nut washer is so worn it will not compress enough to the new tail pipe!!!

AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!

So...I remove the trap part and the slip-nut, replace the washer and go to re-attach the trap to the drain out-let.

The drain out-let fell over...literally...it fell over....

WT?!?!

&%$%#&)%*%&@^$@(*$

AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!

The stupid thing broke off...under the vanity cabinet floor!!!

So, now I had to get the Multimaster out and cut enough of the vanity bottom out so I could see where it broke off. Go figure...even with the floor.

Mystery #2 solved. Turns out that the drain out-let had been even more rotten the the pipe that snapped off at the aerator. All this time I thought the funky smell was coming from the toilet. I have changed the wax seal on the toilet several times thinking it would solve the problem, but it didn't. So we then chalked it up to the fact that the plumbing up stairs had been leaking for so long it permeated the woodwork. Now we know where the problem was!! It wasn't the toilet at all - it was the lavatory drain!! Since it was hidden under the vanity we couldn't see it at all. There is no telling how long it had been leaking and causing the smell. It also answers the question as to why new stains would show up occasionally on the kitchen ceiling.

Before I show you a picture of it let me show you this one.

This will allow you to see the connection I had to make for the water lines. At this point the floor of the vanity is gone.



Do you see how nasty it is under there?!?!?!

This is so embarrassing and humiliating!!!

The yellow bucket is to catch the dripping water.

In order to see just how bad it was I needed to remove this part of the vanity cabinet which meant that the top had to be removed and the vanity removed.

Take a look at this.

I've thrown this picture in so you can see what the walls of the bathroom use to look like - brown and gold!! Don't forget that the woodwork was painted a cross between hot pink and purple. Man - the 70's were a wild time!!!

Okay, this next picture is not for the squeamish - you are warned!!!

This is the break.

Can you believe how nasty this area is?!

I told you it wasn't for the squeamish.


Here's a close-up.

You can see just how rotten the pipe was. It's a wonder we weren't getting flooded out each time we used the lavatory! There is an instillation stamp on the vanity. We know that it, as well as all the piping, was installed in 1973!!

Time to get the Multimaster out again. I had no choice but to cut out some of the floor so I could see if there was more damage.

Here's the floor with the tile removed.

The original flooring is still there, however, it has been subjected to this slow leak for so long it is heavily warped and spongy.

It was so bad some of it just disintegrated on contact.

FINALLY!!! For once I've had some luck.

All the piping is galvanized and the connections are close together. This means I don't have to remove anymore of the floor at this point.

In this close up you can see the spot where the drain outlet pipe broke off.

The blackish looking stuff at the pipe joints is not a sign of leakage. It's the original pipe dope from the 70's. This might make things difficult for replacing the water pipes and the drain pipe.

Right now the hex nut is soaking up some PB Blaster. I can't get it to budge.

Tomorrow I will bring out the big guns in order to remove this puppy. I will also have to turn off the water to the house so I can remove the water supply lines. As of now we can not find shot-off valves to the 2nd story.

I guess at least one more trip to Lowe's will have to be made tomorrow.

Pray for me....

Here is one more picture to leave you with.

This is just so you can get a better view of the crap found under the floor boards. I even found a large piece of glass that was about 1/4 inch thick. Now why would that be in there?

It's going to be interesting when we do re-do the bathroom. We plan to remove the original floor, since it is ruined for the most part, and replace it. There is no telling what we'll find when we do this.

I'm telling you, it's either me or the house. One of us is not going to survive.

Well, till next time...

Cheers!
Larry

Woodwork/Bleach Up-Date

Hello Everyone!

Since the last post several things have happened.

First of, I have caught the 'crud' that's going around. SWMBO has been keeping me doped up for the past few days.

With the exception of a few hours Saturday afternoon I've been in bed for the most part. More about this later.

After a couple more treatments of the Calcium Hypochlorite we got all the stain out we could.

Today, I have spent several hours, gently, sanding the woodwork to get the rest out.

The powder room door jambs and lintel are finished; the basement one isn't.

If you look at the basement door you can still some dark splotches.

My arms are tired and the sniffles have come back, so I've called it quits for the day. The basement doorway will have to wait till tomorrow.



Here's a better view of the powder room door.

The inside parts of the casing and stops have not been sanded yet.












Okay, as mentioned we got out for a few hours Saturday afternoon and I paid for it later that day and Sunday.

Believe it or not I wore out the head on my Makita finish sander so I needed to get a replacement. Luckily there is a tool store in the big city that had one.

While at the tool store I went ahead and picked up some new items for the Multimaster.

I've added a sanding finger to the attachment collection as well as various grits of sandpaper to go with it.






Tomorrow I will try it out, as well as an 'alternate' use for a worn-out blade.

Well, till next time...

Cheers!
Larry

Wainscoating Up-Date II

Yes, yes, yes....I know it's been a while since the last post, but I have been busy.

First off, we have not installed that restored porch light yet. There really is no hurry anyway.

We are also in the process of seeing about getting hooked-up to the city sewer system. We're still having problems and we now think the tank from the 40s is failing.

By ordinance the city has to bring the sewer line to our property line and that won't be cheap or easy. They will have to install a lift station for it to work properly and the two closest sewer mains are each a block away and one of them would require that the paved street be torn up.

So, the city would have to pay for all of that. All we would have to pay for is running the line from our house to the line they bring to the property line. Either way we go, new tank or sewer hook-up, it's going to cost about the same for us.

I have also been tinkering with the Craig's List table saw and a few other small tasks, such as that crater in the wall (now patched). In the interim I've also been working on the wainscoating.

So, today turned out to be the day that the wainscaoting instillation got started. But first - the obstacles!! There are always obstacles aren't there?

To get the ball rolling with the instillation the mop-board, and corner do-dad, had to be removed. Go figure, something so simple turned out to be a major pain!

Not only did a portion of the top molding of the mop-board break but the nails were huge!

Do you see the size of those nails!?!?!

This is a piece of the trim molding on top of the wide mop board. The hammer is a small one but those nails are at least 3" long!!

Why in the Sam Hill would a person use such huge nails for such a small, thin, piece of trim?

Removing these is what caused the brake in the top molding I mentioned earlier.

Here are the remains of the piece of molding.

Can you believe there were 3 - yes 3 (!!!) - of those large nails, plus two small nails, all within an area no bigger than 3"x4".

What's bad is that this is the corner section. The wood was weak to begin with and removing the nails was just too much for it.

The good news is that all the pieces are here and I can rebuild it. It will take some doing to get it re-attached though.

Oh - remember the corner do-dad? Don't even get me started on how hard it was to get that out!! There was barely any space to work in. It took over an hour just to remove it.

Just another shot of those blasted nails!!

Man - you'd think they were trying to hold the house together or something with these suckers.

What really amazes me is that they used smaller nails to install the large mop board!

Before starting the instillation I got this picture for posterity.

I guess that makes it the 'Before' picture.



Here is a 'During' picture.

I started on the outside edge so that I could get a more uniform look when finished.


I cut the end board with a 45 degree angle so that the end-cap boards 'should' match up.

Not sure if any of you noticed, but I'm starting to loose my daylight at this point. I don't like working on the kitchen at night. We have to have all the lights on in order to work and with those big windows I feel like we are on display. I know, a stupid reason, but we live in a nosy town. So, with the daylight fading I needed to work fast.

And here's the finished side!

Well, almost finished. The mop-board and it's top molding needs to be reinstalled which will require a custom made spacer. I will finish this part, along with the end-cap, tomorrow.

You might have noticed there is a plug outlet in the wall. This was one of those times that the Fein MultiMaster really came in handy. I had to cut two boards to get it to fit and was a bit worried about it. Remember, there are only a limited supply of the boards.

Well, with just a couple of measurements, a few zip-zips with the MultiMaster and "Bob's your Uncle". It was a breeze and the outlet opening turned out great.

One last thing. If you look real close at the corner you will see a space. There is about a 3/4 inch space between the edge of the last piece of wainscoating and the wall. Get this though...remember that board that had to have a 45 degree piece cut off of it? Well, the removed piece fits perfectly!! I will install it tomorrow too.

I guess this is enough for now. You'll have to wait till tomorrow night to see the finished product. Hopefully nothing will happen between now and then to prevent it from getting finished.

Well, till next time...

Cheers!
Larry

Wainscoating Up-Date I

Hello again everyone!

Before I get to the wainscoating let me tell you about the new toy I picked up during our trip. Bill and I made a few trips to the DIY stores in his new area to get supplies. I couldn't believe it, there are three of these and they are LARGE! Within a 1/4 mile area there is a Lowe's, Home Depot (unfortunately they are going belly-up) & the biggest Sutherland's I've ever seen!

Anyway, while at Lowe's I picked up the following new toy.

It's a Swanson 48" Adjustable Aluminum Drywall Square.

Who ever came up with this deserves a medal. I can't believe something like this hasn't come about before - perhaps it has and I just missed it.

Speaking of Lowe's....

We went to all of these spots and the customer service was outstanding! In the amount of time I was in the stores I was waited on more than all the visits to my local ones combined! Get this...they came to me and asked if I needed help! They had a smile, was polite and showed a genuine interest in what I needed and in helpig me.

I miss that place already...

Okay - on to the wainscoating.....

Speaking of wainscoating - how many of you are aware that the item is spelt two different ways? You have 'wainscoating' and 'wainscoting'. Along with the different spellings you have three - yes THREE - ways to pronounce them!! You can say it with the ending sounding like 'coat' or 'cot' or even 'scoot'. CRIKEY - can't anything be simple any more.

Anyway....

Here is the first batch cleaned and ready for stipping.

Right now I'm only going to do enough to cover that small half wall.

After the application of the stripper it's bubbling nicely.








Look at that!

Not to bad for a first stripping. I will finish it up tomorrow. I wanted to try and do it tonight, but have ran out of time.

Speaking of time. What do you all do to help pass the time while you do stuff like this? Usually I listen to the radio but since the election I've switched to mix CDs.

I bet none of you have as an eclectic taste in music as I do. Let's see...while waiting for the stripper to do it's thing I piddled in the kitchen and basement while jamming to Grace Slick's 'White Rabbit'; Joan Baez's rendition of 'Lilly Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts'; Aqua's 'Barbie Girl'; Eminem's 'Lose Yourself'; Presidents of the United States 'Lump', Talking Heads 'Burning Down the House' as well as a smattering of other strange music that even included opera.

So, what all do you listen to?

Okay, while sorting through the pieces of the wainscoat I found problems. They are not bad, but will have to be dealt with.

If you look at the edges of the two pieces in the picture you will notice that some of the tongue is missing. Unfortunately most of the pieces of parts of the tongue missing as well as the wall side of the groves.

Since you do not cram the edges up against each other I will have to figure out a way to fix this problem. Right now I have a few ideas, but nothing set in stone.

Then, while scrapping the paint off I noticed the corner where the half wall met the main wall.

The gap is almost wide enough for me to move the moulding in order to install the wainscoating. However - it isn't wide enough to do this so the corner trim piece will have to be trimmed.

This I do not want to do.

Then it hit me between the eyes.

The next picture will help to explain the stone that hit me.

Take a close look at the picture again, but this time with the addition of a red line drawn on it.

Do you see that small amount of trim sticking out past the line?

This bit of moulding is not even with the window. If I trim it back to make it even it will allow enough room to move the moulding without needing to trim the corner piece!!

This will be a job for the Multi-Master.

Guess I'll leave you with this picture.

Once again Shalimar made a bed out of the laptop.




I decided to take a break and went to check my e-mail and found her this way. Unfortunately, right when I snapped the pic she woke up.

Well, till next time...

Cheers!
Larry ~

Bob's My Uncle - Electrical Cable Up-date

It’s finally done! The cable is now in the basement. Now all that needs to be done is hooking it up to the new breaker box. That will wait till we have the new main line installed.

Here are some pics for your enjoyment.

As I told y'all I'd do, here's a pic of the tiny plumbing chase hatch next to the toilet.

Don't you just LOVE that green toilet?! It matches the green in the kitchen!

We know the kitchen was remodeled in the 50s, but I'm thinking they might have repainted the kitchen sometime in the early 70s. The date stamp on the toilet is for '73. They probably ordered the kitchen paint when they ordered the bathroom fixtures! The tub is even that color.

Unfortunately I had to do what I didn’t want to do - a hole had to be cut in the chase.

The cable did punch up in the chase. The end got wedged between the wall and the stand pipe and just sort of coiled there.








Again, a cramped space, but my handy-dandy Multimaster came to the rescue! The hardest part was prying the piece of wood out.

There’s the sneaky little devil - the silver thing heading towards the tub.






This is a pic of it after I got it unstuck and heading for the hole. The fun was not yet over though.

Ah…there’s the serpent now!

Trust me - it wasn’t a fun job getting it to this point. I had to shove my arm, up to the elbow, and ‘feel’ for the cable. Once I had it I had to un-pry it from under the tub.

Once done I was able to get it to the point you see it at and then it snagged again.




This time the snag was in the attic, so I had to run up there and uncoil it, lay it out somewhat, and get it started again.

The whole bloody mess…

Now I just need to snake it into the basement.





Remember the part about snaking my arm up into the floor from ceiling? If you look at the floor you will see a bunch of fuzzy stuff. No, it is not the remains of some animal I found, but something much worse. It’s the old fiber glass insulation used back in the 50s through the 70s!!

AAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

As you all may remember, I’m somewhat sensitive to the pink stuff; just think what the old stuff did! I looked like a raspberry with all the red dots all over my arm. It didn’t stop there either - it went down my T-shirt which just happened to be wet with sweat.

I couldn’t wait to shower, but I needed to ‘buck-up’ and deal with it till the job was over.

One last thing - the round, grey thing is a 10 pound weight I used to help keep tension on the cable so it wouldn’t coil back up on me.

Here it is all cleaned up with the cable heading for the basement.

Now I can say “Bob’s my uncle” and call it a day.












Till next time…

Cheers!
Larry ~

Just call me "Tool Man"

Well, today didn't go as well as I had hoped, but progress was made!

The floor did get replaced (sorry, no pics, will snap one tomorrow) but it was an ordeal. I cut the 4'x8' wafer board flooring plumb and true yet I forgot a MAJOR component of the equation - the shed it's self. The shed is not plumb and true, it is more cock-eyed than anything. So I had to make several adjustments and now the floor looks more like an experiment gone bad.

Anyway, I got to use several power tools today (grunt-grunt beating chest) so that was a plus.

Let me just tell you about my newest favorite power tool. I know I've mentioned it before, but it must be mentioned again - the 'Fein Multimaster‘.

If you are restoring a home; remodeling one; or just like piddling around the house fixing things - you need one of these!

The only caveats I have towards it are the prices of the attachments - especially the blades. However, there are web sites that tell you how to make your own blades, or you could do like I do and visit Al over at ’Multiblades‘.

He has a rather good range of blades to choose from and some great tips. I highly recommend his products.

Here you can see one of the main reasons I wanted this bad boy.

I know it is kind of hard to see in the picture, however the Multimaster was able to cut out the rotten parts flush with the new wood without cutting into the good wood.

Perhaps I should have set a level on top of the new piece of wood (needed to bring the old and new up to the original level), but it IS level.

Do you have any idea how hard this would have been if the Multimaster wasn't around?

On to other problems.....

I am needing to add extra studs to the corners in order to get a nice, even spot for the wafer board to be attached.

You'd figure this would be easy - but NOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I recycled the studs from the center wall for this application. Do you have any idea how hard it is to nail, or screw, something into 100+ year old wood?!

As you can see, I did not get far with the nails or the screws. In fact, I used a hammer drill and it still didn't work.

The pic shows how far I could drive those in before they would go no further.

So, out comes the drill for rather large pilot holes and then the use of the hammer drill again. This time it worked.

Finally, the first course of wafer board was all the way around!








That means the ENTIRE bottom half of all the walls are installed!!

WOOHOO!!!

Here's a view of the north wall.

Is it just me, or is the stove beginning to look like some weird alien?

Okay, at this point you might be asking "why have you only gone half way up the wall?". That's easy to answer...insulation.

If you remember, my father-n-law got us a bunch of that pink insulation and we used it in the attic. I used some of the left over from the attic for this project. Unfortunately there was only enough, barely, to do about half the shed.

So, I priced the same pink stuff. Do you have any idea how much this stuff costs?! For a 22" x 96" roll you pay between $30 and $33. In order to insulate three sections (spaces between the studs), plus a little extra, we'd have to pay almost $100!! To do the rest of the shed it would be well over $1000!!!!

So, I hit the books, and the internet, and looked at the options. Here's what I came up with.

Blow-in insulation!

Yup...that's right, blow-in insulation.

At first I was turned off to this, mainly due to settling, but the more I read the better it sounded for this application.

First of all, the settling rate is a lot better than it use to be.

Second, it is all natural from clean, recycled paper and has not Phormaldehyde in it.

Third, it doesn't make me itch like the pink stuff.

Fourth, and here's the clincher, it only costs about $8 per bag!

It will take a total of 8 bags and give me an 'R' value of about 32. Now I wish I would have used it on the other half!

I will also be making it so that the top 1' of the wafer board can be removed so that the settling can be checked.

Now, the down side was "how to install it". I had read in the past that you could install it by hand, but it was easier with a blower. Well, the hand installation would have to be the way to go. Even though I could borrow the blower from the place I bought the insulation I would be on a waiting list for over a month!

Installing this stuff by hand is not a big deal. All you have to do is fluff it up and put it into the cavity.

I did this by putting some of the insulation in a large plastic tub and then fluffing it with a crab fork. This worked, but there just seemed that there had to be a better way.

Then it hit me!! The blower was not much different than a leaf vacuum!!!

So, I borrowed my father's hand-held Black & Decker leaf vacuum/mulcher and decided to "play".

Here's the set-up.

One large plastic tub; one leaf vacuum; and one bag of insulation.

That's it.


Presto-changeo you have this!

All that I needed to do was empty the bag into the cavities. Now how cool is that?!




So, even though there is no picture of it, the ENTIRE bottom half of the wall is now insulated!!!

Double WOOHOO!!!!

Tomorrow I should be able to finish the top half of the wall - that is as long as nothing happens to prevent it.

Anyway, it's getting late so I'd better sign off for now.

Till next time...

Cheers!
Larry ~

Update & Prepping Progress

The garage sale was a big success!! The only disappointment was not selling a large whirlpool tub we have. It's worth over $2,000 and brand new. We had some serious lookers, but no takers. Oh well, we will find a way to get rid of it.

Sabu is also back to normal. We had thought that the garage sale was going to become the "Sabu Benefit Sale" since we were expecting the bill to be around $750. Thankfully we have an awesome vet and they didn't charge near that amount.

On top of that SWMBO let the money we made in the garage sale buy a new toy!

Check this bad boy out!

It is a Fein Multimaster.

I didn't buy the new model for several reasons, but the main one was the price. This one also comes with some attachments that they no longer supply in the same kits together AND it has metal storage case!!

There is just no way to tell you what all this tool can do, so go to the site and check it out! Be sure to watch the videos.

If I had had this tool from day one things would have gone a lot easier around here.

Prepping for the plaster skim-coat is in full speed.

I've never been good at mudding & tapping so I'm hoping the method I've decided to go with for the skim coat is forgiving.



Here's the chimney chase.









I need to do a second coat of mud to fill in some low spots.



Just another pic where the ceiling meets the wall.


The section above the powder room and basement doors.







The dark areas that look like mold are spots I had to scrape loose paint from.

The two cracks above the stove.










And last but not least - the hole in the wall where the vent was!

Now this patch I'm happy with! I need to do a couple more coats of mud before it'll be ready for the skim-coat, but I think it's looking good so far.

So, hopefully, Wednesday I will start the skim-coat process!! WOOHOO!!!!

Till next time...

Cheers!
Larry ~