I Can't stop the rain!

So this weekend my friend and construction guru was back from his business trip.  He stopped over Saturday and together we safely disconnected electricity to two outlets so that I could remove those last two boards.  This is necessary because when the new window goes in, it will allow us to install a straight wall and gets us those precious 8 extra inches in our bathroom.  After we handled the electrical, we reviewed the work that needs to be done and I have a plan for the final demo and when we will do the plumbing and electrical.  

There was a copper pipe with our old showerhead still standing in the middle of the bathroom.  "You can take that out you know, " E said to me. I was dubious.  He assured me not to worry, and explained what to do.

Today I made the cake for our Sunday dinner, and then took out a couple of boards that needed to be removed. Then I decided not to do more because we need to have the dumpster brought back.  I thought I would remove that pipe. It was small and surely would be quick.  I got my pipe wrench and gave the fitting a turn. . . and heard water.  I could not see water, but I could hear it. The washer was going and for about 10 seconds I convinced myself it was really the washer.  Then I shut off the washer.  I could still hear water.  

I went down cellar.  My plumbing is largely concentrated in a gross crawl space kind of area of my cellar.  Over the many years my family has lived here (remember I am the fourth generation to live here) that crawl space has become the repository of things people did not want making it a hazard. The plumbing has been higgldy piggly cobbled together.  In short folks, it.is. a. mess.  And what I found when I climbed in and shone my flashlight was that a copper pipe had totally separated and was gushing hot water on the brick back exterior foundation.  I scrambled in and looked for a shut off.  There were lots of them but many went to pipes that were disconnected.   I tried pushing the pipe back into the fitting.  This resulted in giving myself a shower.  Just what one wants to do in a crawl space!  Um, maybe not.

I climbed out, ran upstairs, texted my friend, gave my phone to Elisabeth and said for her to let me know when he texted back.  I went back down and resumed my search for shutoffs.  I finally found one that slowed the flow but did not stop it.  Then I got a bucket and put it under the remaining leak.  

E arrived.  It took him a while to figure out how to stop the flow so we could work on the pipe but eventually we got it to cease.  My wife got home and she knew where the main shut off to the house was and that helped.  He showed me how to fix the mess, at least temporarily.  The piping is both old and not really done correctly. And all the weird little shutoffs really need to be consolidated and  a different kind of shut off used.  The reason the pipe came apart when I used my wrench was because they were not fit together properly.  The pipe actually had to be cut so it would fit in properly. We got it fitted and soldered.  And took our  cobwebbed covered selves out of the crawl space.  E promises that when we do the bathroom plumbing we will re-do all of this and it will not be an issue again.  He also promises that it will be a half day job.  I am betting it is a full day job.

 

Chet makes a plan!

 This past weekend was Easter weekend so it was light duty in the home improvement arena.  I got a new medicine cabinet for the upstairs bathroom and installed that.  I picked up a new vanity for that same bathroom, so I can install that when the downstairs one is someday finished. LOL I did some picture hanging, pulled some nails, kind of  kept things low key.  

Chet found getting rid of the old medicine cabinet rather heart wrenching. I had him help me pull it out and we looked at all the rust all over it.  Honestly there was so much we had covered it with duct tape  years ago. It was put in when I was 4 and i am in my 6th decade; this owes us nothing!  It helps him to  be part of taking the old thing out and he calmed doing that.

Later he came and asked me what was behind the walls in his bedroom.  I asked if he meant did it have insulation and he said yes.  I explained that there is no insulation in those walls, actually in any of our bedrooms.  There is no heat upstairs either but we are all used to that.  Chet then asked if I could someday "rip his walls apart and put in insulation."  LOL  Well, yes, i could, once the other projects I have going are done.  It would really only be two walls so it would be pretty straight forward, though getting the debris out of the second floor will be a pain in the you know what.

More than that though I was concerned over how Chet would handle mess in his space. And there would be mess.  I explained that I only can work on the weekends and it would take about 4 weekends for me to get the job done. You have to understand that Chet essentially lives in his room. He comes down and socializes at meal times and for occasional short bits during the day. But by and large, the man l ikes to stay in his room.  And he doesn't like mess and he doesn't like change.

I said I was willing to do the job but it would probably be late summer or early fall.  And that he needed to think this through carefully.  He nodded and wandered off.  Two hours later he was back.  He said he had thought it over and he thought we should really do this because his room is cold and this would make it more comfortable.  He had decided that while I am working in the day time that he could hang out in Elisabeth's former bedroom and he had checked to make sure there was tv access there and a place for him to sit comfortably.  In short, he was a man with a plan!

I can't begin to express how impressed I am by this. I will check in with him again in the late summer to make sure he still feels the same way but as it stands now, I will be taking his two north facing walls down to studs insulating and hanging new drywall.

Of course, more reno!

 This is actually part of last weekend and this weekend's endeavors.    Last weekend, I helped my wife open a doorway that had been closed up between her bedroom and the kitchen.  While it had afforded the bedroom privacy, it was not done in a way that made it look like a seamless wall.  With reclaimed knotty pine from other parts of my endeavors we were able to do that.  K hates the demo.  I tell her you need to talk to the nails and ask them how they want to come out.  LOL  She remains unamused.  However she ROCKS taking the materials and fitting them back together in a virtually seamless re-install.  This is the "new wall" 

 Finishing the wall in this manner also gives more walkspace which is an added bonus!  I love the way it looks and I feel like my very thrifty grandparents (who originally installed all this knotty pine) would be proud that we salvaged it so carefully and created this wall out of it.  

On the inside of the bedroom K had to hang new drywall which she did yesterday.  She is a whiz with drywall too!  Wednesday on her day off she will tape and mud it. Then all that will be left is sanding and painting that wall.  If the paint store can't match our chip we will just make it an accent wall and do it a shade or two darker than the other walls.

Today I insulated the back wall of the "alley way" of our kitchen. Our house has little and in some cases NO insulation. Well it has foam board that went on when we had it sided but I am sure judging by how cold our home is in winter and how high my utility bills are, that the R value on that is pretty low.  We are having a new, slightly shorter window installed at the end of this skinny part of the kitchen because we stole 8 precious inches for our bathroom re-do.  This will give us a straight bathroom wall (maybe the only straight one in the house!) and an energy efficient window as the existing one was put in by my grandfather in the 60's.  When I was harvesting boards for the wall project I got them out of the bottom and top of this back wall as well as from a strange upper storage cabinet that we removed.  Of course taking off the horsehair plaster and lathing brought the walls to the studs and there was, as we thought, zero insulation.  This wall is almost on the true north of our home and this part of the kitchen is cold enough that in the winter we have gotten skims of ice on the pets water bowls down here.

So for a lot of folks this would be  a really non sexy pic.  I  mean, it isn't like the beautiful wall my wife made.  But what it is, is the promise of hopefully more warmth!  That is the first few batts of rock wool that I put in.  I have done the whole back wall and part of the outer side wall.  We can all ready see a difference in the way the area feels.  So much so that we are getting a price on replacing the other window on the side outer wall.  This will require moving out a run of cabinets, cutting a corian counter (NOT something I am doing on my own) but then I can remove the wood carefully, take out the plaster and lathing and rock wool that wall as well. We will label the boards and I'll turn over the re-install to my capable wife.  The reason we were able to harvest wood from the back wall of the alley is that I have saved some lovely pine boards to make a bookshelf for cookbooks. It will go right under that window up to where ever the new window will be.  The boards are 8 inches which happens to be exactly the length of the cat perch that used to be down there.  So the top will be kept free of books but can have a cushion on it for the cats so they can watch the birds and squirrels to their hearts content.  

Weekend Warrior Woman!

 This weekend I kicked it into high gear in the bathroom project.  I got almost all the wall demo done and also took up the old tile floor and the subflooring. 

This picture was courtesy of my wife, surprising me with a candid pic when I lease expected it.  But actually today what I wanted to write about was not what I was doing physically, but how I have worked to help this be tolerable for my son Chet. Chet has Aspergers.  He is very much a person who craves consistancy.  He has his evening shower (now bath) at the same time every night. He has a snack at the same time every day.  He takes the recycling out at the same time every day.  You get the gist of things.  The guy does.not.like.change.

And here we were planning the biggest change to our space that we have ever done.  I knew when we started this that I would have to use care to help Chet get through this.  Knock wood so far we have been melt down free.

I started explaining what we were thinking of doing way before we did it.  I explained that we talked to two companies and they could only do a portion of this work for between 10 and 13K  If we took this on ourselves and did it with minimal contractor input we would have a more functional, beautiful space when we were done and we would not probably pay 1/2 of those numbers in cost.  Chet is analytical so this helped.

I also took time every weekend to explain what I was going to focus on that day before I did it.  Even if I explained it the week before, I did it again.  I gave him 20 minutes to ask all the questions he wanted and then I would move him along so I could get working.  Chet will literally ask questions for hours if you don't put an end time on things.  He would check back in with me at snack time to see what I had done so far.  It helped keep the mystery out of thngs.  I have a pretty thick skin where Chet's concerned. I know that he does not mean to be hurtful.  His saying things like "what are you destroying now?" is not meant to hurt my feelings.  I just always explain that I am taking apart things that don't work for us so we can install things that do work for us.

For instance, I demoed a closet. I am going to build a new one there with better and more functional shelves and a sliding barn door that can have towel bars on it.  To Chet, the old closet was "perfectly fine" and i had to take the time to show him why it wasn't.  Explaining it calmly and quietly helped.

I had to alert him to noise.  I never start work before he has his breakfast and does his hygiene so tha the can get upstairs before I start banging.  If something is extra noisy like the tub removal, I warned him and I kept the bathroom door shut to try and minimize the sound. Chet is extremely sensitive to sound.

I have found ways that he can help.  I had him help me carry the pieces of the cast iron tub to our dumpster. I have had him hold doors open, or fetch tools.  Not a lot, just things here and there so he feels a part of the process. 

I have showed him the new components that I have purchased for installation. The new toilet has been vetted for energy efficiency. I showed him the insulation and explained why I bought this specific type of insulation instead of the fiberglass.  I showed him why having a new shower head with a detachable hand shower would be helpful.  He needed concrete examples which I had but it made it possible for him to feel we did not have to save our old showerhead.

In some ways, all of this is more exhausting than the labor of getting the bathroom down to studs. But he has stayed calm and that is really really huge. We are all looking forward to the completion of the job but if knowledge helps him deal with the inconveniences I am all for it.

A Tale of A Tub

 The bathroom renovation (which is still basically demo at this point) has been progressing nicely.  It is not as fast as I would like--projects never are.  There are a number of factors that play into that. My construction guru friend has out of state jobs periodically and is unavailable to coach me.  But mostly the slow down is that I have tried to keep the bathroom functional as long as possible and I can only work on weekends as a general rule.  

By this weekend I had progressed to the area that gave me the most concern of all.  The Great Removal of the Tub.  As per usual I spent loads of time watching youtube vids on the best ways to remove a cast iron tub.  I should also note for the record that I am in my sixth decade and weigh about 130 pounds.  Also the bathroom area is very tight to work in.

I saw a cool method using an angle grinder but don't have one.  My friend E had a saw that he fitted with a blade for metal.  I gave that a try on Saturday.  It took quite a while for it to cut through the cast iron and it could only go down so far. It could not cut across the floor.   After many hours of do that I decided to move onto plan B which involved using a sledge hammer. (also borrowed from construction guru friend)  

However it was later in the day and clearly I did not think this through.  My idea was to bash the tub in the area where I had made the cut.  In my mind I thought that this would then eventually cause the tub to fracture sort of on the line of the cut I had made.  It did not work like that.  After 30 minutes of bashing with a gigantic sledge hammer I had, as my oldest son so kindly put it (a very small hole for all that work) Thankfully I refrained from bashing HIM and called it a day. LOL

That night while lying it bed it occured to me that I was approaching this bashing thing wrong.  I needed to bash the BOTTOM of the tub as near as possible to where the side cuts had been made. I got up early, had a quick breakfast and 20 minutes later:

I wound up bashing it into three sections.  One I could carry out myself.  One my wife helped with, and the last and largest one I carried out with Chet. Kirsty has a bad back and I was very worried she would injure herself. 

This is the area that used to have a tub!  Notice there are two doors on the back wall. They don't go anywhere these days but long ago they went to a shed and to a barn where the "three holer" was.  I am now in the process of removing the green board and getting down to the studs.  When my friend is free he will show me how to remove the doors and seal the space more effectively with insulation.  But it has been a good weekends work and i am proud of the progress.  Also, I found the bathroom floor under the tub to be in excellent condition so that is a plus as well!

Fly Like an Eagle!

 This morning bright and early we helped Rob bring the last of his big belongings to his new apartment in the city.  I got to meet his roommate C who seems like a nice fellow and helped him carry in his dresser.  The room mate pitched in with the mattress and Rob grabbed the drawers.  It was done before i knew it and suddenly I was hugging my son on the sidewalk and driving away.

He is, as most young people are equal parts ready and not ready.  He is eager I am sure for the autonomy of living on his own and not having to worry about the needs of other family members around him.  We are a big family and so there are bathroom logistics and since I like to know that everyone is safe at  night I request that he let me know when he'll be home. I don't care where he is, i just don't want to wake up in the morning and find out he never arrived home.  In his own place, I can just pretend he is tucked in safe at midnight and call it a day. LOL

He has been moving things over most of the week, but there are a few smallish things left to do.  He does not want to stop his mail coming here and he wants to come home for Sunday dinners.  He is a funny kid in that to me, you NEVER need a reason to stop over here.  But I think by making those 2 commitments he feels he has a reason to come and that makes it okay for him.

But I know he is nervous too.  Years ago, when Rob first came home to us we had a wonderful cat named Wally.  Wally was the most unusual feline.  He was not noisy because his previous owner was deaf, so he had a whole different way to communicating.  He was big and strong and very affectionate.  Rob had a lot of night terrors in those days.  Wally helped comfort him.  And when we read The Kings Stilts at bedtime, Rob decided that Wally was a "patrol cat" like in the story.  And for years, Wally patrolled and Rob felt safer.  Sadly, Wally developed cancer and passed.  We had him cremated and brought his ashes home intending to have a burial ceremony in our back yard.

I thought that was important to give Rob closure on the loss. But he never wanted to bury Wally.  The lovely wooden box has stayed in our house all these years and he has never actually been ready to bury him.  He has with other pets, but not Wally.

Yesterday as he gathered kitchen implements and other items, he asked my wife if he could bring Wally with him.  Of course she said yes.  So the patrol cat is still on duty.

As we drove to the city a bald eagle flew over our car.  I take that as a sign that my boy is really ready to spread his wings.  We have given him the foundation, and the love and the drive to make whatever his dreams are become reality. But I am still weepy and emo as all get out.  Many parents ease into this because their kids go away to college. Rob commuted so this all feels equal parts raw and right.  

Springing into Change!

 I am going in to work late today because I have a job interview at 10.  It started as a bit of a whim.  I saw an ad while I was on vacation in December.  I sent my resume and received a prompt call.  I had a phone interview and then a zoom interview a week or so  later.  It was planned that I would have an in person visit at the site in January but the interviewer became ill with Covid and things have been in hiatus until now.

I really want to be a property manager and i don't see my company promoting me to that position. It would mean finding someone to handle a very complex compliance aspect and that is somewhat harder to do.  The site I work at is a blended site with a number of subsidy programs so there are constant audits and interfacing with a variety of regulatory agencies.

I was a sort of defacto interim property manager for over a year for the site.  I did very well and my regional manager did tell me that she wanted me to become the manager. However our company CEO found someone else and she took the position.  She is very nice.  I like her a lot.  I had to help train her which was kind of weird. I also got a very nice bonus for all the extra work that I did in the dual capacities.  But, as i said, I don't see them promoting me because it is in the company's interest to keep a highly qualified person in a compliance role.

I am also somewhat limited by my own personal medical condition. I have migraines.  The number of them vary according to weather patterns, allergies, and a number of other factors.  I manage well but one thing that I try to do is limit the amount of driving I do because that has a strong correlation with the number of migraines. (particularly night driving with headlights coming at me) I also worry that in a long commute I would be unable to drive safely home if I had a migraine come on at work.

My present job is 3 miles from my house.  I could literally walk there if I had to. I have biked there when there was road construction because it was faster than waiting in traffic. The job I am applying for is only about another 4 miles down the road. 

There is much that is unknown but there is always much to be learned from the interview process.  So here's to challenges, potential opportunities and advancement!