Crap. Looks like our water heater has sprung an irreparable leak, which means there is an expensive repair in our future. On the good side, the shutoff valve, which is directly above the heater, has been corroded since we moved in, and whose handle snapped off in my hand when I tried to close it, will get replaced too.
Update 2.23.09: Water is back, and life may resume as normal. We got a new AO Smith 50 gallon unit installed with an expansion tank and a new shutoff valve, as well as a gas shutoff (which was never there). Expensive, yes. I did peep out tankless systems, but the entry models at the H-D topped $1K to start, and I’d guess the pro-grade models would be an extra $200 or so before installation.
The funny part of the story is that I got home from a 5-hour Scout adventure Saturday afternoon and decided I’d put some extra time in on the basement while I was still in work clothes. I hadn’t been downstairs more than ten minutes when I noticed the first trickle of water from the heater, which grew into a pool an hour later. If it had been midnight, or a day when Jen didn’t make it downstairs, the whole basement could have been awash and we wouldn’t have known until the dryer floated away.
…about the 1/2 of snow crippling the greater Baltimore area this morning is that it has confirmed a suspicion of mine about the lack of insulation in our porch ceiling. I originally put R-19 up there, thinking it would be plenty for the application, but as my lovely bride will tell you, it’s fucking freezing out there. The radiators do in fact heat the space up, but all warmth dissipates within about 20 minutes or so, making it useless for an all-season office (we’re currently using the dining room table).
This morning I peeked out the front bedroom windows and noticed the snow melting on the porch roof directly over the office area, which tells me I need at least another layer of R-19 over top of the existing insulation to keep that warmth in. Which means I’ve got to find a way to get up in there that doesn’t involve carving a hole in the drywall or using a shrink ray. Fortunately, I’ve got fresh freelance checks in my back pocket and there’s a sale on insulation at the H-D this week.
I spent all the free time I had this weekend kneeling in the ice room beneath the office building kneewalls for insulation. The idea is to add R-14 along the exposed sections of outside wall in an attempt to retain as much heat as possible, while keeping costs as low as possible.
Firstly, I had to seal up the lousy masonry with hydraulic cement, making sure everything is air and water-tight. Hydraulic cement is interesting stuff; it hardens in minutes, so it’s best to apply with nothing more than gloves. Imagine mixing small batches of oatmeal and then smearing it all over the wall before it turns to stone.
Once that was done, I started constructing the frames. For a grand total of around $60, I got two 12′ lengths of wall completed this afternoon, with two more left to do.
Additionally, because it seems to be the only window in the whole house with a correctly sized, in-stock premade replacement, I ripped the ancient, original hopper window out and installed a new one. I’ve been paranoid about this particular window since we moved in, because it’s semi-visible from the road and looked about as secure as a convertible with the top down. For $120, we got a vinyl dual-pane slider with a low U rating that fit almost perfectly. I find that these projects get easier and quicker as I do them; this one took about two hours minus a trip for pressure-treated lumber. Eventually, I’ll order three more for the rear and replace them as well.
After the basement section is done, I’m most likely going to have to crawl up into the attic above the porch ceiling and add another layer there as well. I’m really looking forward to that.
After two days of all-out work, I’ve got the porch very close to completion. The baseboards, toe molding, and finish molding are all in and painted. Network drops are wired and ready. Jen picked out a beautiful Pratt-Lambert light gray for the walls, which keeps the room light, neutral, and accents the bright white woodwork. The only things that remain are the drywall above the door to the bathroom, which needs to be primed and painted, and areas around the switchplates which need to be sanded, primed and painted.
There is a little touch-up to be done with the color here and there, but I’ll wait until the other stuff is ready to go.
The other day, I was hanging the light fixture in the nursery, a room which affords a beautiful view of the street in front of our house. Up on a ladder, I was attempting to untangle a bunch of ancient fabric-covered wires without stripping too much of the insulation and torching our house, when a strange sound caught my attention, and I happened to glance down at the hedge that fronts our lawn. A water bottle had just landed at the base of the hedge, and the remainder of the water was illuminated by the afternoon sunlight as it sprayed from the top and fell back to earth. The fellow who had thrown the bottle continued walking up the street past the house, oblivious.
A few things flashed through my mind at that moment, the first few of which involved violence. I imagined picking up the bottle and throwing it directly at the back of his head. I had a clear image of the bottle in my fist as it connected with his solar plexus. I could see how snugly one of our garbage cans fit his body as I brought it down over his shoulders, our household refuse mingling with his hair and staining his work shirt.
Instead, my feet landed on the floor of the room and in the low bark I learned from my father, I yelled at him to pick the bottle back up at a volume that stopped him in his tracks. He motioned the inability to hear me, and I repeated myself clearly: PICK THAT BOTTLE UP OFF MY LAWN. He peered up at the house, waved weakly at it, then said, “I’m sorry, Mister,” and retrieved his bottle from the grass. I don’t suppose he could see me clearly, but the voice yelling at him from the house clearly spooked the shit out of him. If he’d seen his conscience in the flesh, he may not have been so conciliatory—I’d guess he outweighed me by a hundred or so pounds—but he was the soul of contrition to the Voice Of God.
In retrospect, I don’t know what made me angrier, the fact that he was littering, or the fact that it was my lawn. I personally can’t stand litter, and the idea of simply throwing something out the window or on the ground as I’m walking does not compute. I suppose it’s fitting, then, that I own a house on a minor thoroughfare where litter tends to be swept up by the wind and into our bushes so that I can clean it up. I’m not the tidiest of homeowners. I don’t have thousands to spend on weekly landscaping, and my bushes aren’t perfectly manicured. But that doesn’t mean it’s OK to finish half a bottle of water and toss it into my yard. What is it with people?
When it starts smelling like Bubblicious on our back lawn, we know it’s time to harvest grapes. This year’s initial pick was about 6 lbs., which Jen quickly made into jelly and canned.
This is what happens when you hire professionals to work on your house: shit gets done right. We are HAPPY.
One of the little things that’s been annoying me since we moved into this house is the general suckitude of the upstairs toilet. The whole bathroom is shite, really; the walls are uneven, the bathtub is old, the linoleum-over-tile floor is disgusting, and the sink is one of those separate-faucet deals where hot and cold come out of different spigots. Want to wash your hands with warm water? Sorry. Your choices are SCALDING or FREEZING. But the toilet has been the main offender lately. Dating back to the Korean War, it was a 5-gallon model that saw the harsher side of eight children before we ever got here. Tiny hairline cracks in the bowl refused to come clean. Stains in the porcelain (not ours) defied scrubbing and chemicals. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it had a noticable instability from side to side—not the most confidence-inspiring feeling when taking care of business. Possibly the most annoying thing, though, is the fact that it didn’t flush. There is nothing more embarrassing than having to stand in there with the door closed, flushing the thing four times to make sure the package has been delivered.
This past weekend I decided to use some of my hard-earned homeowner skills and replace the balky old beast with a pretty new low-consumption unit from Lowe’s. I did a bunch of research (in a strange bit of serendipity, the latest issue of This Old House mentioned a Canadian-sponsored study on toilets, which I found online; there was so much exhaustive data there I pretty much gave up. Apparently Canucks have nothing better to do than chart toilet flushing power in inscrutable Excel spreadsheets and debate the merits of sponges vs. soy paste for test material) and settled on the American Standard Cadet 3, which will, apparently, flush a bucket of golf balls with 1.6 gallons of water. Sold!
Last night, I gathered up some buckets, plumber’s wrenches, rags, and newspaper, and had the old toilet drained and off the floor in a half an hour. Cleaning off the flange and surrounding floor, I saw no glaring problems, and prepared the new toilet base for its maiden voyage. Settling it onto the flange, it bolted right up, and I was about to fetch the tank, when I tested it for stability. It rocked back and forth as badly as the old unit did. Bolting it as tight as I dared without breaking the porcelain, I couldn’t keep it from rocking sideways—a bad omen. Wood shims on either side didn’t correct the issue, which defied logic, and my stomach began to clench up as I realized what the issue was: I leaned the bowl all the way to the left and lifted it off the floor. Underneath, bolted snugly to the base of the toilet, was the brass flange, now unconnected to the lead pipe leading into the cement floor.
In a morning phone conversation with a trusted plumber, I was told the old-school way was to connect a lead junction up to the top of the iron pipe, and then a brass flange was fitted over the lead. The sides of the lead were hammered down over the brass to “connect” it, and the job was finished. Gotta love the old school, right?
So, until we can get a plumber out here to rectify the situation, my seven months’ pregnant wife has to use the basement toilet, which is the aesthetic equivalent of making her pee in a prison cellblock. I’ve just cleaned up the toilet out on the porch and set it up for us to use in the meantime, but that solution is also substandard at best.
In the meantime, say a prayer to the porcelain god for us: Our Dear Lord John, please show mercy on us. Let the plumber fix our problem without having to tear up half the floor in our bathroom; five projects in this house is enough.
I briefly considered posting some pictures, but you really don’t want to be looking at my toilet drain. Trust me.
Update 11:49AM: Plumber #2 is on the case.
Update 1:28AM: We have a working, functional, shiny new toilet. And the old gas line in the doctor’s exam room is capped off and gone! LET THE POOPING COMMENCE.