Two projects left, flooring and siding...

The siding, well that deserves a post all to its self...

The flooring however is turning out really nice, we bought the brazilian koa from lumber liquidators, its expensive but since its on cement and not being glued down we needed a engineered non laminate (dogs, kids and their various accidents ruined our last laminate floor so not doing that again) flooring, so far so good. After 4.5 hours of work here's what it looks like:

Finally (and mostly accidentally) remembered to take a before picture.. this is the cement flooring before we got the hardwood, and what we have been dealing with for the last month. But stefan you say, what about the humdidity... well two things, one that is drywall dust on the floor, and its not sticking, its just floating around, so probably no water problems... two see the greenish yellow crap? Thats the foam backing which acts as a vapor barrier, and three its engineered not solid, so its designed to expand with a little moisture, so, we're covered...

Now for the siding....

Fun with plumbing

Now, if you know me, you know that the only thing I hate more than plumbing is gas, which is essentially plumbing that if you mess up can explode and kill you instead of just making you wet...

So I'm at work and Jenn calls, the dishwasher is leaking all over the kitchen floor. This mind you, is the day after the electrical snafu so I'm wondering if maybe something got shook loose when the guys were working on it... When I get home I find that the dishwasher is full of water (Jenn stopped it mid-cycle to stop the flow of water) and the p trap under the sink is as well.

Now my contrator is the plumber in his family and he installed the sink for us... He used these accordion fixtures because they are easy, but they are not to code... They are now full of water, fully expanded and leaking everywhere...after Tightening up The joints the leaking stops but the water won't leave, so I grab the trusty plunger and have at it. Since the kitchen sink has two vessels I plug the other one (otherwise you just suck air in from the other sink btw) and have at it. Eventually the sink is full of water and I am once again sucking air. Good news it, the sink is properly vented, bad news is the plug is somewhere past the vent.

So off to hd for some drain cleaner and supplies. I buy a plumbers snake, and some PVC to fix the drain properly. Ironically while easier those accordion things are about 5 times as expensive as doing it right...

Back home, take apart the sink and drain out the remaining water, then since it's a double sink I reconnect just one sink to the main plumbing and pour down some of the drain cleaner, it recommends half a cup, I poured in the whole bottle, I figure this is a special case.. Did I mentioned this stuff is guaranteed to work? By this time it's 11:30 at night, so I call it quits needing to work early in the morning.

While I am waiting or our tech team to install what they need to, I am standing in the kitchen looking at the sink and notice the water is gone Woot!! Turn on the tap and sure enough the water drains...for a little while, then the sink fills up again. Looks like I have no choice but to use the snake. Work is finally finished and I take the sink apart again, if you are going to use a plumbers snake the best thing to do is get it as close to the wall as you can. If you can take the sink assembly out it will make your life easier because you can see if the snake is going up that awesome vent stack, or down where you want it...

I bought a 25' plumbers snake instead of the cheap 8' one, and thank god I did... The "issue" is about 20' down the drain. After several attempts at drilling through the gunk I finalls hit something and am able to pull the snake out with a giant glob of mystery crap in it. Next (I bought more of the guaranteed to work stuff btw, since I have had good experiences with it in the past) I pour another half a gallon of the drain cleaner down the sink and take a break. Like anything, the longer this stuff has to work, the better.

With no shortage of projects while I waited for that I installed doorknobs on all the new doors downstairs. Who designed these things? The doorknob doesn't come off, so when you are screwing the screws in they are constantly in the way... I think of the 4 I installed I only managed to get one in without completely ruining the screws... Best of luck to the poor bastard who has to take them off...

Back to the sink, I boil up a kettle full of water and pour it down the sink, repeat that three times then run the water as hot as it will get and wait with my fingers crossed... 3 minutes later it's still leaving as fast as it comes in! I've won! And I saved myself at least a couple of hundred dollars (yes after taking into consideration the cost of tools) by not calling a plumber! I call Jenn over to show off my success, since she knows I hate plumbing I'm expecting some kudos, all I get is, does that mean the dishwasher works? Well no, since I haven't fixed the sink just yet, I just fixed the drainage issue... Love you too honey, now go away...

Once I correctly install the sink (I'll put some photos up later of the before and after to show you how messed up it was) the dishwasher drains like a champ and we're all set until next time. Oh yes, there will be a next time, that kind of drain clog doesn't just go away, it's hiding in there waiting until I am out of town so that it can make the dishwasher puke all over the floor again, mark my words...

Duct tape... What is it good for really?

So other than making wallets, or boots for cats, what is duct tape really good for? It doesn't stick to anything, dries up and is basically useless for duct work... What brought this on? We had a hvac guy come in and give us a quote on what it would take to fix the geriatric ac unit in our attic.

The ducts are made out of insulation, which I thought was weird, so they are soft, and all disconnected everywhere. Anyways the quote was for 3500 to just raise the unit, replace the ducts and drop two new ducts into the basement so that we can get some ac down there. Right now we are losing at least half of the ac into the attic because the ducks are all broken.

Ok well I don't have 3500, if I did I would fix the pool first because I can't get insurance until that is fixed..and the fence, and the shed..sigh... So off to home depot. I'm a DIY expert right, how had can duct work be? You buy a dozen rolls of duct tape and your good! Only I know better, sorry to all you duct tape enthusiast out there, but it's crap. It's certainly not what you use for ducts, for that you use the shinny metal tape that sticks to it's self as if it were the same piece of tape..

I pick up 10 6" diameter pipes, 8 90 degree elbows, a dozen or so clamps, and a roll of the metallic tape to prepare for battle tomorrow. The attic is on average 20 degrees hotter than the outside due to the roof being black, and almost no air circulation. Ok granted when the ac kicks in there is some nice cool air moving around up there at present, but it's still damn hot, I'm really hoping it won't be hot tomorrow when I try and do this.

Edit: ok so it's 1am and I just finished the duct work... Yah I know, but I thought, hey it's probably cold up there right now at about 11:30, and I was right, it was about as cold as the inside of the house. I dragged most of the components up stairs and got to work, starting with the ducts in the mbr (one of them doesn't put out any air at all) I patched them up with the tape, reconnected the ducts that have fallen apart so that they are sturdy again.

While I am a pretty good diy'er I'm a crappy blogger because I forgot to take before pictures, but I will post some after ones below so you can see some of the funny crap I had to do. Anyways when I am finished I set the ac to 68 and check all the ducts, low and behod they are all belting out cold air and the temperature in the house is dropping by one degree every 10 minutes. Success! Of course, Jenn is not impressed because it's 1:30 and instead of letting her sleep I am talking to you guys...

We're IN!

OK, so I know I've been quiet, but its hard to do anything when you are holding your breath. The last couple of weeks (months!!!) have been torture. We've cancelled our move date twice, and the only thing saving us is that my landlord didn't have anyone renting the place we were leaving so we could stay an extra month...

But we're finally in the house, no where near unpacked, and we're still missing flooring in the basement and paint in half the rooms, the laundry room is half finished, but now we are living here. The contractor now understands what I meant by my dog being insane, as he now has to deal with a barking dog for every second he spends in the house, maybe it will speed them along (or just give them another reason not to come to the house)

Electricity, how hard can it be?

Seriously, there's a hot and a cold and ground, just like water only it's best not to let them mix... Right? Simple right?

Sigh, our contractor installed our dishwasher the other day (in spite of me telling him, and the electrician telling him not to) and when I went to turn it on, nothing. Nw behind the dishwasher there was a box with a 120v and 240v feed, so my immediate thought was, he connected it to the 240v and I need a new dishwasher, or should I say ANOTHER new dishwasher...

Max to the rescue (he's the electrician and a really great one) turns out the garbage disposal switch next to the sink not only Turns on the dishwasher (what?) but also two lights over the sink. Max sets about re-wiring that and notices some serious no nos... My contractor, is clearly not a licensed electrician as he used the wrong gauge wire (smaller number = larger wire, weird but true. Using the larger number wire means that you could melt the wire as it heats up trying to carry enough current for you. Melty wire usually means fire...) he also connected the ground to the dishwasher, but not to the ground in the wall completely defeating the purpose of the ground wire. Last but not least, he didn't use a clamp around the wire, so here is something that is perpetually filled with water, that is ungrounded, and with a wire that is rubbing on metal all the time... Basically a recipe for eventually electricuting yourself...

While max fixes that, which incidentally took him 6 hours due to the sheer volume of wires in the box, the electricity is off of course... Now the major issue with this house was water damage if you remember... When the elec is off, water starts dripping down the kitchen wall from the pump in the attic that is supposed to take the run off from the ac unit and bring it outside. More on the ac next post... Back to fun with electricity for now...

Finally all is said and done and Max and his father in law leave. Everything goes well for a little while until Gavyn goes to sleep. He has a ceiling fan in his room, and a personal fan (which secretly I think he needs for the white noise not the cooling effect as he sleeps under his comforter all the time) and the lights go out on the bedroom side of the top floor. I mean all of them, his room, the hallway, the master bedroom, the master bathroom.... All of them. So down to the breaker box, sure enough the fuse popped so turn it on and go turn some lights off to reduce the load.

Anyone who knows anything about electricity knows that by code you should only have between 10-12 things on a single breaker. One pot light counting as one thing, and one plug counting as one thing, we're approaching 40 things on that one breaker. Short of re-wiring the house not much I can do but change to cfl lightbulbs and try and keep most of the lights off all the time...

Finally, things have calmed down and I go to work (yes, all of the above happened on one day...) and my contractor comes over to install two new back doors on the house. The olds ones are so bad they don't even open anymore, but for $1000 I get two new doors installed and they look pretty good too... Before they get installed however the lights dim again, and then go out. The phones are down (wireless hand sets don't work well in a power failure) the Internet is down, and Jen has no cell phone so she cant reach me. She somehow finds my mifi and gets online long enough to email me so I give Max a call and he heads over right away.

Meanwhile, the neighbor comes over and asks if we are having electrical problems. That's right, we did something and the ENTIRE block is paying for it. I'm still not sure how that happens, that's what panels in your house are for, to isolate you from the outside world, but anyways the transformer on the street has lost a phase, so we can only get 120v into the house which is then split for all of the plugs, lights, etc in the house.. Pseg to the rescue and we are back to normal... The guy driving the truck says this happens all the time to this house... So we're in for some more interesting things I'm sure.

I love my folks

OK so if you read my other blog you know I'm all gushy about my loving wife and how much we get along and all that, but my parents rock too. When you have kids you start to resemble your parents in the things you say and do, and start to feel sorry for what you put them through...:) Anyways, my parents deserve this call out, and on the reno blog, because they came down to help us move!! Only we weren't moving because hey, thats just how this project is going. Anyways, when they came down they not only brough me 20 coffee crisp bars (if you care canadian you get it, if you aren't you don't, but they are the best chocolate bar out there, and sadly not available in the states), 2 LARGE tins of Timmy's coffee, but they also brought down 4 boxes of Robertson screws.

Now I've mentioned Robertson screws a couple of times, otherwise known as square heads, but they are basically impossible to find down here. They are also vastly superior to any other screw out there (though a recent experience with a 6 inch long lag bolt with a 10 pointed head and a sore wrist might alter that opinion) so the fact that they thought to stop off and grab what must be 50$ worth of screws to bring me shows how cool they are.

Love you guys! Thanks for coming to see us and hopefully next time we won't have to kick Kyle out of his room so you'll have somewhere to sleep!