Happy 2 Year Housiversary!

In true form, I have been over committing myself all year to do a bunch of stuff I barely had time to do, including derby, SCA, the house, and maybe even my job.  Over Winter Break, we tore down the wall between the middle room and the upstairs hall and put up drywall and five power outlets and painted it Shark Fin and Dark Currant. We also installed the same floor as in the back room, and it has been quite pleasant as Dave's office.  And, because why not, we found live knob and tube in the floorboards that ran the fans downstairs.

We spent New Years with friends, only to come home to a frozen water meter.  This prompted the next project: replumbing the house.  Over Spring Break we bought a new water heater and Dave replumbed everything with PEX.  It is quite nice to have an all inclusive manifold that can turn off every individual output in the house.

Over the summer, I am supposed to rewrite the book for EMCH 316.  Hopefully I can also finish off the hall-side of that wall >.> and the rest of the flooring upstairs.  The only things that will be missing then will be putting in useful shelves in the bathroom and a couple of lights that were disconnected from the knob-and-tube.

Oh! I'm supposed to be getting a new roof in four weeks, if the contractor gets his shit together.

Digging up the walkway

A couple of weeks ago, we finally took advantage of the weather not sucking and got back to fixing up the walkway.  Dave rented some tractor thing, and then the neighbor was nice enough to jump in for a bit.

The ground was pretty even with the neighbor's grass, held in with the red bricks.

Dave plowed all the way to the back yard and evened out the terrain.

Then came a lot of gravel that had been collected from last year.

I was asked to dig a trench for rain collection where the house ended, so of course I hit a 4" rusted pipe as soon as Dave left to pick up the grate from Home Depot.  Luckily it was only 1' long and the rest of it was terracotta that I was able to dig out.

We used some of the grey stones that were retaining the herb garden (now the ramp to the back yard) to retain the neighbor's yard and my staircase.  They have a lip on the back, which is why they aren't making a clean corner, but I should be able to resolve that soon if we decide to leave this permanent.

All in all, Dave only drove into the house twice.

Stairwell

Progress on the house has been slower than I would have liked, but I finally finished painting the foyer and stairwell.  Unfortunately, the colors I chose for the upstairs and the downstairs aren't playing nicely in the center, and the olive drab looks more evergreen up against the crimson with the lamp light.  Now that I stained the trim and it is no longer blonde wood, the colors look a bit better, but I think I'm going to need to stencil something on to the wainscoting or glaze it with something that makes it darker and yellower.  But hey, progress!

On a side note, maybe I shouldn't have stained wood during the first snowfall of the year >.>

Sometimes

you just really need to break shit first thing in the morning.  Like this very inconveniently placed shower.

Under that drain is the main staircase to the basement.  You know, the one you would use if you needed to replace a water heater.

Who knows how long this stall has been in place, but it is extremely brittle.

 And parts had rusted off/together.

At least the wall looks intact behind it and there is no mold.

Too bad the sink is on this side of the shutoff valves, so now I need to try to take those last fittings off the end of the pipes to cap them off, and they are not cooperating.

Yay home ownership!

This week has been busy.  After about three loads of laundry and another of dishes on monday, we found out tuesday morning that the heating element in the water heater had died.  Dave said he would fix it after work, and he tried. And then the heater didn't want to drain over night.

So I spent a couple of hours draining 18 gallons of water into my calphalon pan and dumping it down the toilet.  And then I tried to pull the elements out.

The top one was perfectly ok.  The bottom one, not so much.

 It was all bent out of shape and totally encrusted, so I had to saw a piece off and manhandle it out.

But wait, there's more!  Lime sediment all the way up to the opening for the element.

I tried some vinegar to break it up, but I would have needed soooo much more than just a gallon of cleaning vinegar.

So I went to True Value to pick up something stronger, and they told me this needed to be sucked up.  So I picked up a third shop vac instead.

Fourteen hours of hell and three gallons of lime sediment sucked out later and I finally have a working water heater again, with two new elements and a new thermostat.

This Is The House That Suck Built

I have this thing about vacuum cleaners.  Specifically shop vacs.  They are so useful!  So when the water heater elements ate shit, I panicked that I couldn't find my one gallon shop vac (my first!) that I only use for wet pickup.  Enter Number Three, my new 2.5 gallon wet shop vac.  I gave it a good shower after the hell that I put it through on wednesday.

This is Number Two.  16 gallons, used for dry pick up, and I've put it through so much hell over the last many years.  Especially with the room demo.

And then I find this whiny little bitch hiding in a cabinet in the laundry room >:[

And because I need something that isn't industrial powered, I found this little beauty at Good Will for $5.

Yep, vacuum cleansers.  Second only to sewing machines >.>

This is why you never leave me unsupervised.

No, like seriously.  Don't leave me unattended or I pop the bubble in the old paint and try to remove all the flaking wallpaper.

And then the old and ruined plaster crumbles off and I have a 12x8" hole.

And then I end up at Home Depot ten minutes before they close with a five gallon bucket of plaster.

A few layers and a week later, it fills in nice.  Meanwhile, I find another mass of loose wallpaper near the door and obviously pick at it.

The archaeological dig is fascinating!

Eventually I manage to get paint on the actual walls.

And stain the wood for the trim.  I am beyond happy with how this looks.

Three layers of paint later, I try to hand the wainscotting.  Welp, metal nails don't want to go in through the plaster, and the walls aren't flat enough for Liquid Nails to make enough contact.

That is a full tube of glue.  I ended up taping it to the wall and maybe the top left third ended attaching.  Will the next pieces manage to stick up?  Who knows!  But I haven't burned the house down yet.  I just want something that will survive 3-5 years while I restore some of my savings and redo the kitchen (which takes much higher priority).

Oh, the flooring has finally started!