Hrm winter is coming

There can be no doubt that winter is coming. I had my colleagues over from Coach for a BBQ on Saturday and they all gamely froze to death outside. You see, we were supposed to have the BBQ when the project was finished, and we did... it was just finished 3 months behind schedule...

Anyways with the oncoming of winter I figured it was a good time to fix the leaking pipe in the heating system in the garage. Last time i posted we had identified the leak, but not yet fixed it... nows the weekend, carpe dium and all that crap.

The water is leaking from the bulkhead that I built, so down that comes

My fear of course is that I put a screw through the damn pipe when I was putting the bulkhead up. Luckily I am without blame on this one, but its still interesting... The leak is coming from somewhere up there....

Kyle climbed up into the attic and poked a hole in the ceiling to let the water that was pooling up there out, lo and behold, the water is coming from about 9 inches away from the bulkhead! Vindicated! I didn't cause it...

Apparently not having heat caused the issue... There is the burst pipe that I am going to have to fix later... note that the hole is about 5 inches across... there is an electrical wire running through there, and I have to solder a new pipe up there... this should be good times. How many times have I mentioned how much I abhor plumbing?

Hurricane Irene, glad you're gone..

We were truly blessed by Irene missing us. I see a lot of articles and pictures of people wading through their ground floors looking for prized possessions and can't help but be thankful that all we got is some water coming up out lawn

This photo was taken about two hours after it stopped raining, within another two hours the water was completely gone. Thanks again for amazing sewer system... the high water mark was another 8 ft up the driveway.

The irony of finishing the project and then having Irene flood the house was NOT lost on me... especially since most of the issues with the house were related to water, it would have been pretty fun in a sad and desperately pathetic kind of way.. Now, I can look back at it and laugh, since it didn't happen... This flood was over the 100 yr mark, so looks like while our street does flood, we're out of the way of the worst of it, glad to know.

Our pool, before, and after

So lots going on these days, after 6 weeks dumb and dumber finally finished the siding. have to admit it looks good, and it damn well better for taking all the time it did. Well it looked good until Huricane Irene came through and tore some of it off... Cold plate of Irony anyone?

Most of what I have been doing doesn't make for good blogging, that or I forget to take a before and after photo...:) This one is something that I had nothing to do with, other than to open my Wallet up real wide and let the pool guy reach in with both hands.... here is what the pool looked like before:

and heres what it looks like now:

You can also almost see that I power washed the fence... The fence now actually looks new instead of like a slime covered remnant from a post apocalyptic world...

Three way light switches... wtf...

OK so I have this weird electrical issue with the lights in the garage, yes there are a couple of other weird electrical issues, but for now I am going to deal with the lights in the garage. Basically the problem is that there is one light switch at the front of the garage that turns on the light in the garage, and the light in the storage room.

Sounds like no big deal right? Except that its the only light around, so you have to walk to the front of a tool/garbage ridden garage to turn the light on and off.... bit of a pita... so I decide to take a look at it, surely I am not the first one to think this sucks. At the door to the garage (the one that leads to the house) I have a plug, in the ideal place for a switch... so I take the plug out and low and behold there is a 3 way Romex in the box.

OK, so whats a three way Romex? Its an electrical wire that has white, black, and red. The red bit is the important part I'll get to that in a minute. Anyways the electrical plug (which was installed by my electrician) has one black, both whites connected to it, and the red is tied to a black heading back into the wall.

Now, I know 3 ways like I know italian. That is to say, not at all. But I know from the internet that there should be one "normal" wire coming from the panel, one "three way wire" going between the switches, and one "normal" wire going to the light.

Problem is that I have one normal wire going to the switch, and a three way at the front of the garage. At the back of the garage I have a plug, and a three way wire...

At this point my wifes unshakeable faith in me is getting shaken. She wanted the project house, but water is the bane of both of our existences, and whenever that stupid pump starts leaking she basically loses it. She wants me to call the electrician... I of course think, he didn't do it right the first time, what makes you think he will do it right this time...

You tube to the rescue, theres quite a few good links if you google for "How does a three way switch work". One of them actually lead me in the right direction (after I blue a fuse, and caused the stupid AC pump to leak again.. hate that damn pump, seems like if you turn off any breaker anywhere in the house the things stops working...).

The key is, there shouldn't be a plug there... after scratching my head and staring at some live electrical wires for awhile I decide to take a current checker and check the plug. Deader than a door nail...

Current checker? You see Holmes on Homes using it all the time, its this little pencil like thing that beeps when it comes into contact with current, the higher the current the more emphatic the beeping... Anyways since the plug is dead that means that the two wires in the box are connected to the other switch, and the light.

Finally all the wiring diagrams that I have been looking at make sense. I take the two three way switches I bought (oh yes, I planned ahead, you can't use regular switches they have to be three way) and I wire em up per the diagram.

From the fuse box (which is the only wire that makes the current checker beep when all of them are floating around in the air) you attached the black wire to the black terminal on the switch. The white wires get bound together and the black and red from the three way go on the other two terminals of the switch.

Next you go over to the other switch, again the two whites go together, but now the black from the "normal" wire that is going to the light goes to the black one, and again the black and red go to the other two terminals. It doesn't REALLY matter which one you put the red on, but I tried to stay consistent... Now with two switches floating in the air I decided to see if the light would turn on... sure enough it did, and turned off, and on regardless of which switch you used! Success!

Now I have a box that has a place for a plug, but no plug.... I will run another wire later, but for now I hooked the neutrals together, and spliced a wire onto the common terminal (black one) of the second switch. For those of you wondering, if you turn off that first switch near the garage, the plug doesn't work anymore, but its good enough for now.

Desrosiers 1 shed, 11

We had this old wooden shed in the backyard when we moved in, I was convinced someone or something was living in it. Anyways our insurance compance wouldn't give us insurance unless we either put the shed on the ground, or removed it. The shed was up on cinder blocks and they were worried it would blow over.

Now, feel free to comment if you think that particular bit of bureaucratic nonsense is as ridiculous as I do, but since we have a chow chow State Farm is the only insurance company that will even insure us, so I do what they want.

So first step when demoing anything, remove the roof right? I honestly have no idea what I am doing but it seems if I could get the roof off with Kyle, then the rest should be easy... In retrospect we should have knocked out all the boards on all the walls first, then taken down one wall and let the roof come down...

After three of us step on rusty nails (I'm the only one who strikes skin rigt after Jenn tells me to be careful of the nail that I step on... Shes a witch, I swear it...) and are cut scraped and bruised, but the shed is firmly in the dumpster...

It was rotten almost to the core too, so it's a good thing I'm getting rid of it. At least, that's what I am going to tell myself when I shell out a couple of grand to by another one in a month...

I probably should have listened to her...

So things are progressing well, we've even got trim up in a couple of rooms, there will be a barrage of posts later this week when I get around to them, for now its night after night of working on the house... Patching drywall, replacing lights, recepticals, building a desk, you name it...

When we tore up the floor in my office we discovered a rank smell, mold worthy, but we didn't think it was mold. When we actually got the vinyl flooring up it was discovered to be the source of the smell! Once we got it outside the smell died down to almost nothing, except under the stair. We bought this neat product called Damp b Gone (real name to be added later) and while I was skeptical I thought 8$, its cheaper than most apps in the app store..

The premise is a bag of mystery stuff sitting over a canister. The mystery stuff apparently captures the water which is then considered brine (salt is involved somewhere, ya think?) and drops into the canister below... Again, sounds almost magical but I put it under the stairs and promptly forgot about it. This week the contractor was finally back to finish the flooring in the main room and he decided he would do the closet. He pulled out the damp b gone, and sure enough it was half full of water! However the mold smell was still pretty bad.

It was then that we found that we had a leak in a pipe, not just any pipe, but the main water pipe to the house. Now, you know I hate plumbing, and its the one thing that Jenn doesn't think I can do, so of course I have to prove her wrong...

Not sure if that video worked, and excuse the amateurish filming...:) I'm new to this..

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....