We started tearing out the closet by the front door. This closet is
one of the coldest spots in the house now because there is no
insulation in the walls or ceiling and it is outside the brick walls
of the main part of the house. A little insulation should fix that.
We also need to fix the wiring for the light in the entry way, the
porch light, and the outlet and the outlet under the display case
(which isn't really all that nice and so is also going away).
On the HGTV show If Walls Could Talk, homeowners are always
showing off the treasures they find. Well, here are some of ours.
Some clothing was stuffed in the space around the plumbing.
Unfortunately, Mickey didn't make very good insulation.
Oh, and there was some underwear (and more, but not really worth
showing here). Yuck.
With all the fun out of the way, it was on to the walls.
All clean.
Here are some shots of the awesome (?!) framing job.
And a shot of the box for the front porch light.
The front wall of the entry way is probably around eight inches thick.
I always assumed that it was framed with 2x6 or 2x8 lumber. But no,
it is 2x4 walls with the same fiberboard sheathing that we found on
the ends of the garage walls where we replaced the siding last year.
Outside of that there is apparently additional framing of some kind
(maybe just more 2x4s) and then the hardboard siding directly on that.
The electrical box is partially mounted to the siding. The other end
of the hanger is nailed to the stud on the interior wall. Hmm. I
guess we'll be showing more of this when we replace the siding around
the front door later this summer.
With access to the plumbing from inside the front entry closet, I
started cutting it loose so we can double up some more joists.
Before putting up any new 2x8s under the bathroom I added a few more
boards in the middle of the living room, under the master bedroom
closet.
Given that the joists under the bathroom had some ugly holes hacked in
them very near the top and almost directly in the center of the beam,
I sandwiched all of them. I was able to drill one board before
putting it up and use that hole as a guide for cleaning up the
existing hole and drilling through the new board on the other side.
This worked reasonably well and I managed to drill out all these three
inch holes without burning up my drill.
Here's a progress shot. We only have two more joists to go, but they
have giant notches gouged out of them, so we'll be sandwiching them
too.
After getting the boards up, I took a break from plumbing and
carpentry and did some more work on the yard.
The grass I planted about two weeks ago is starting to come in, but
not quite as well as I had hoped. We'll be getting some topsoil to
fill in the area by the back deck where the patio was, so if this new
grass is still looking lame when we do that, I'll spread a little more
topsoil over this area and try some more new seed.
Tonight I ran the tiller over the bare part of the yard again to
loosen it up and then I started moving dirt around to fill in the hole
where the patio was. I managed to get almost half of it smoothed out.
If the weather is still nice tomorrow and I'm not too sore to move,
then I'll try to do some more. Then we will need some topsoil to make
up for what we lost when we
removed
the
patio
and then we can finally plant some grass.
I did a little more reshuffling of the dirt and rocks in the back yard
this evening. Now it is pretty close to being ready for a layer of
topsoil and some grass seed.
I removed the rest of the old pipes that came up from the basement and
put some new cutoff valves in the basement (sorry, no pictures).
I also spent some time in the yard tilling up some weeds and digging a
drainage trench through the back corner garden area with the hope that
it will alleviate some of our
drainage problems.
Then we took the afternoon and evening off and visited one of our
favorite places in western
PA.
After nearly three years idle, the wood chipper started up on the
second pull. Nice. I don't know why, but I've been avoiding this
chore now for, well, the last three years or so, since we moved in to
the house and started collecting branches and other yard debris.
It took a couple of hours, but I eventually reduced the pile to
mulch and spread it around under the pine trees. We also uncovered
some stones around the garden shed that have been buried for a while
now.
Here's a look at a future project. But this can wait a long time
(unless the siding actually starts falling off) because it faces the
fence and isn't even visible unless you are standing behind the shed.
I started working on replacing the plumbing to the master bath and
third bedroom today. I got as far as the toilet and all the hookups
in the basement.
The 1/2-inch line here is the hot water return
line. Once this work is done we'll get nearly instant hot water to
the shower in the master bath, which is probably 50 feet of 3/4-inch
tubing away from the hot water heater in the basement. Having the
return line go up an extra floor should also increase the circulation
rate and give us warmer water in the lines at all times (not that it
was bad before when it was just a loop in the basement).
I also moved the supply lines farther away from the exterior wall.
That and the insulation we will be putting in the walls here should
prevent the pipes from freezing again like they did last winter.
I finished the rest of the plumbing today. Here's a shot looking up
at the ceiling in the living room and a closer view of the maze right
under the bathtub. I still have to hook up the drain lines. That
will mean getting the drain from the third bedroom, the overflow drain
from the tub, and the main tub drain, and a trap all hooked up in this
already crowded spot without needing to have notches in
the joists and leaving room for another joist sandwich
here. I think I see a way to do it, but it will be a tight fit.
I counted something like 49 new fittings. That was a lot of
soldering. And I don't know what I did wrong this time, but not one
leak!
I started working on hooking up the drain lines today. This is a real
PITA as there are three drains (third floor sink, bathtub, and bathtub
overflow) that all have to come together in a tight spot before going
through a trap. I didn't know exactly what fittings I would need
since I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to make it all fit, so I
bought an assortment. Of course I guessed wrong and will need to
trade in a few of the ones I have for something different. But I
think that I can get this painful little job finished tomorrow.
I also did a little floor repair in the closet. The faces of these
boards are only 1-1/2 inches wide. I had some wider flooring and this
is less than two square feet, so I just ripped the boards down to
width and put grooves in them. It's not perfect, but hey, it's just
the closet.
If you think this looks like a crazy way to drain a bathtub, I guess
I'd have to agree with you that it is. But I didn't see any better
way to get everything hooked up and through the trap and to also have
the trap up above the bottom of the floor joist. Once I got the
threaded coupling on the trap tight enough, it didn't leak, so I guess
that's good.
We were also able to get the last two floor joists sandwiched between
new boards. The new drain adapter for the tub was just a little too
big to clear the tops of the new boards, so I had to notch them about
half an inch. That's not what I really wanted to do, but at least it
is not like the previous hack job that they did when the tub was first
installed.
Oh, I almost forgot. As expected, we now get hot water in the shower
in about three or four seconds, and hot water at the sink in maybe
five to seven seconds. I wouldn't recommend tearing out walls just
for that, but it is a nice bonus.
I found a bat flying around in the house today. Eventually it latched
on to the smoke detector in the attic room and I was able to get it
out by getting a ladder, a bucket, and a piece of cardboard. It flew
off after I set the bucket out in the front yard.
I'm not sure how it got in, which still bugs me a little, since I
don't know how to prevent it from happening again.
